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SOME FORERUNNERS OF ITALIAN OPERA
by
W. J. HENDERSON
Author of
"The Orchestra and Orchestral Music,"
"What Is Good Music,"
"The Art of the Singer," etc.
[Illustration: Publisher's Device]
New York
Henry Holt and Company
1911
Copyright, 1911,
by
Henry Holt and Company
Published March, 1911
The University Press, Cambridge, U.S.A.
TO HER
"_In a land of sand and ruin and gold
There shone one woman, and none but she._"
SWINBURNE
PREFACE
The purpose of this volume is to offer to the English reader a short
study of the lyric drama in Italy prior to the birth of opera, and to
note in its history the growth of the artistic elements and influences
which finally led the Florentine reformers to resort to the ancient
drama in their search for a simplified medium of expression. The author
has not deemed it essential to his aims that he should recount the
history of all European essays in the field of lyric drama, but only
that of those which directly affected the Italians and were hence the
most important. For this reason, while some attention is given in the
beginning to the French and German liturgical plays, the story soon
confines itself to Italy.
The study of the character and performance of the first Italian secular
drama, the "Orfeo" of Poliziano, unquestionably a lyric work, is the
result of some years of labor. The author believes that what he has to
offer on this topic will be found to possess historical value. The
subsequent development of the lyric drama under the combined influences
of polyphonic secular composition and the growing Italian taste for
luxurious spectacle has been narrated at some length, because the author
believes that the reformatory movement of the Florentines was the
outcome of dissatisfaction with musical conditions brought about as much
by indulgence of the appetite for the purely sensuous elements in music
as by blind adherence to the restrictive laws of ecclesiastic
counterpoint.
With the advent of dramatic recitative the work ends. The history of
seventeenth-century opera, interesting as it is, does not belong to the
subject especially treated in this volume. The authorities consulted
will be named from time to time in the pages of the book.
CONTENTS
Chapter Page
I. The Early Liturgical Drama 1
II. The Sacre Rappresentazioni 21
III. Birthplace of the Secular Drama 35
IV. The Artistic Impulse 53
V. Poliziano's "Favola di Orfeo" 68
VI. The Performance of "Orfeo" 85
VII. Character of the Music 98
VIII. The Solos of the "Orfeo" 117
IX. The Orchestra of the "Orfeo" 136
X. From Frottola Drama to Madrigal 147
XI. The Predominance of the Spectacular 160
XII. Influence of the Taste for Comedy 179
XIII. Vecchi and the Matured Madrigal Drama 190
XIV. The Spectacular Element in Music 207
XV. The Medium for Individual Utterance 220
Index 237
SOME FORERUNNERS OF ITALIAN OPERA
CHAPTER I
The Early Liturgical Drama
The modern entertainment called opera is a child of the Roman Catholic
Church. What might be described as operatic tendencies in the music of
worship date further back than the foundation of Christianity. The
Egyptians were accustomed to sing "jubilations" to their gods, and these
consisted of florid cadences on prolonged vowel sounds. The Greeks
caroled on vowels in honor of their deities. From these practices
descended into the musical part of the earliest Christian worship a
certain rhapsodic and exalted style of delivery, which is believed to
have been St. Paul's "gift of tongues."
That this element should have disappeared for a considerable time from
the church music is not at all remarkable, for in the first steps toward
regulating the liturgy simplification was a prime requisite. Thus in the
centuries before Gregory the plain chant gained complete ascendancy in
the church and under him it acquired a systematization which had in it
the elements of permanency.
Yet it was through the adaptation of this very chant to the delineation
of episodes in religious history that the path to the opera was opened.
The church slowly built up a ritual which offered no small amount of
graphic interest for the eyes of the congregation. As ceremonials became
more and more elaborate, they approached more and more closely the
ground on which the ancient dramatic dance rested, and it was not long
before they themselves acquired a distinctly dramatic character. It is
at this point that the liturgical ancestry of the opera becomes quite
manifest. The dance itself, at first an attempt to delineate
dramatically by means of measured movement, and thus the origin of the
art of dramatic action, was not without its place in the early church.
The ancient pagan festivals made use of the dance, and the early
Christians borrowed it from them. At one time Christian priests executed
solemn dances before their altars just as their Greek predecessors had
done. But in the course of time the dance became generally practised by
the congregation and this gave rise to abuses. The authorities of the
church abandoned it. But the feeling for it lingered, and in after years
issued in the employment of the procession. When the procession left the
sanctuary and displayed itself in the open air, something of the nature
of the dance returned to it and its development into a dramatic
spectacle was not difficult.
According to Magnin[1] the lyric drama of the Middle Ages had three
sources,--the aristocracy, religion and the people. Coussemaker finds
that this lyric drama had in its inception two chief varieties, namely,
the secular drama, and the religious or liturgical drama. "Each of these
dramas," he says, "had its own particular subject matter, character,
charms and style. The music, which formed an integral part of it, was
equally different in the one from the other."[2]
[Footnote 1: "Les Origines du Théâtre Moderne ou Histoire du Génie
Dramatique depuis le Premier Siècle jusqu'au XVIe." Paris, 1838.]
[Footnote 2: "Histoire de l'Harmonie au Moyen Age." Paris, 1852.]
The liturgical drama, which was chronologically the first of the two
forms, originated, as we have noted, in the ceremonies of the Christian
church, in the strong dramatic element which inheres in the mass, the
Christmas fêtes, and those of the Epiphany, the Palms and the Passion.
These are all scenes in the drama of the sacrifice of the Redeemer, and
it required but small progress to develop them into real dramatic
performances, designed for the instruction of a people which as yet had
no literature.
The wearing of appropriate costumes by priest, deacon, sub-deacon and
boys of the choir is in certain ceremonies associated with the use of
melody and accent equally suited to the several rôles. Each festival is
an anniversary, and in the early church was celebrated with rites,
chants and ornaments corresponding to its origin. The Noël, for example,
was supposed to be the song which the angels sang at the nativity, and
for the sake of realistic effect some of the Latin churches used the
Greek words which they thought approached most closely to the original
text. The Passion was the subject of a series of little dramas enacted
as ceremonials of holy week in all the Catholic churches.
Out of these ceremonies, then, grew the liturgical drama. The most
ancient specimens of it which have come down to us are those collected
under the title "Vierges sages et Vierges folles," preserved in MS. 1139
of the national library at Paris. The manuscript contains two of these
dramas and a fragment of a third. The first is the "Three Maries." This
is an office of the sepulcher, and has five personages: an angel, the
guardian of the tomb and the three Maries.
The drama of the wise and foolish virgins, which was thoroughly examined
by M. Magnin and by Coussemaker after him, is simple in construction. It
begins with a chorus in Latin, the theme of which is indicated by the
first words:
"Adest sponsus qui est Christus: vigilate, virgines."
This chorus is set to a melody grave and plaintive. Then the archangel
Gabriel, using the Provençal tongue, announces the coming of Christ and
tells what the Savior has suffered on earth for the sins of man. Each
strophe is terminated by a refrain, of which the conclusion has the same
melody as the first stanza of each of the strophes. The foolish virgins
confess their sins and beg their sisters for help. They sing in Latin,
and their three strophes have a melody different from that of the
preceding strophes. They terminate, like the others, with a sad and
plaintive refrain, of which the words are Provençal:
"Dolentas! Chaitivas! trop i avem dormit."
In modern French this line reads, "Malheureuses! Chétives! Nous avons
trop dormi!" The wise virgins refuse the oil and bid their foolish
sisters to go and buy it. All the strophes change the melody at each
change of personages. The little drama comes to its end with the
intervention of Christ, who condemns the foolish virgins. The words of
the Savior have no music. Coussemaker wonders whether the musician was
unable to find a melody worthy to be sung by the Savior or intentionally
made Him speak instead of chant. The same author, in his "Histoire de
l'Harmonie au Moyen Age," gives facsimiles of all the pages of the
original manuscript of this play. The notation, that of the eleventh
century, is beautifully clear, and its deciphering is made easier by the
presence of a line ruled across the page to indicate the relative
positions of the notes. The music of these dramas is what we should
naturally expect it to be, if we take into account the character of the
text. The subjects of the dramas were always incidents from the Bible
and the plays were represented in churches by priests or those close to
them.
It is certain that the educational drama of the church continued in the
state of its infancy for several centuries. Even after the birth of the
"Sacra Rappresentazione" in the fourteenth century the old-fashioned
liturgical drama survived in Italy and was preserved in activity in
other parts of Europe. Several interesting manuscripts in great
libraries attest the consideration accorded to it at a period much later
than that of which we have been speaking. Nevertheless the era of the
origin of the plays as a rule will be found to antedate that of the
manuscripts. For example, in the royal library of Berlin there is a
fifteenth century manuscript of a liturgical drama entitled, "Die
Marienklage." Dr. Frommann, of Nuremberg, after careful study, has
decided that the play was of middle German (perhaps Thuringian) origin
in the fourteenth century. This play is in part sung and in part
spoken.[3] It begins with this bit of Latin chant by Mary:
[Musical Notation]
[Footnote 3: See Robert Eitner's introduction to the First Part of
"Die Oper von ihren ersten Anfängen bis zur Mitte des 18.
Jahrhunderts." Leipsic, 1881.]
The rest of the text is in old German. Here is a specimen of the
recitative or chant with the German text:
[Musical Notation]
These recitatives are in a style exactly like that of the early French
church plays.
As Coussemaker notes, one does not find in these plays the passions, the
intrigues nor the scenic movement found in the secular drama. What we do
find is calm simplicity of statement, elevation and nobility of thought,
purity of moral principles. The music designed to present these ideas in
a high light necessarily has an appropriate character. We do not find
here music of strongly marked rhythm and clearly defined measure,
suitable to the utterance of worldly emotions, but a melody resembling
the chant, written in the tonalities used in the church, but containing
a certain kind of prose rhythm and accentuation, such as exists in the
Gregorian music.
This was the inevitable march of development. The liturgical drama
originated, as has been shown, in the celebration of certain offices and
fêtes, for which the music assumed a style of delivery clothed in
unwonted pomp. Characters and costumes and specially composed music soon
found their way into these ceremonies. The new music followed the old
lines and preserved the character of the liturgical chant. Gradually
these accessories rose to the importance of separate incidents and
finally to that of dramas. But they did not lose their original literary
and musical character.
In studying the development of a secular lyric drama, it is essential
that we keep in mind the nature of the music employed in the dramatic
ceremonials, and later in the frankly theatrical representations of the
church. The opera is a child of Italy and its direct ancestors must be
sought there. The first secular musical plays of France far antedated
the birth of the primitive lyric drama of Italy, and it requires
something more than scientific devotion to establish a close connection
between the two. But the early French ecclesiastical play is directly
related to that of Italy. Both were products of the Catholic Church.
Both employed the same texts and the same kind of music. They were
developed by similar conditions; they were performed in similar
circumstances and under the same rules.
For these reasons it is proper to discuss the early French religious
drama and that of Italy as practically one and the same thing, and to
pass without discrimination from the first performances of such plays
outside the church to the establishment of that well-defined variety
known in Italy as the "Sacre Rappresentazioni." This form, as we shall
see, was the immediate outgrowth of the "laud," but one of its ancestors
was the open-air performances. The emergence of the churchly play into
the open was effected through the agency of ecclesiastic ceremonial.
Pagan traditions and festivities died a hard death in the early years of
Christianity, and some of them, instead of passing entirely out of the
world of worship, maintained their existence in a transformed shape.
Funerals, as Chouquet[4] pointedly notes, "provided the occasion for
scenic performances and certain religious fêtes the pretext for profane
ceremonies."
[Footnote 4: "Histoire de la Musique Dramatique en France," par
Gustave Chouquet. Paris, 1873.]
The fête of the ass, celebrated on January 14 every year at Beauvais,
was an excellent example of this sort of ceremony. This was a
representation of the flight into Egypt. A beautiful young woman,
carrying in her arms an infant gorgeously dressed, was mounted on an
ass. Then she moved with a procession from the cathedral to the church
of St. Etienne. The procession marched into the choir, while the girl,
still riding the ass, took a position in front of the altar. Then the
mass was celebrated, and at the end of each part the words "Hin han"
were chanted in imitation of the braying of the beast. The officiating
priest, instead of chanting the "Ite missa est," invited the
congregation to join in imitating the bray.
This simple procession in time developed into a much more pretentious
liturgical drama called "The Prophets of Christ." But this appearance in
the open streets was doubtless the beginning of the custom of enacting
sacred plays in the public squares of cities and small towns. The fête
of the ass dates from the eleventh century, and we shall see that
open-air performances of religious dramas took place in the twelfth, if
no sooner.
Other significant elements of the fête of the ass and similar
ceremonials were the singing of choruses by the populace and dancing. In
the Beauvais "Flight into Egypt" at one point the choir sang an old
song, half Latin and half French, before the ass, clothed in a cope.
"Hez, sire Asnes, car chantez!
Belle bouche rechignez;
Vous aurez du foin assez
Et de l'avoine a plantez."
This refrain was changed after each stanza of the Latin. The people of
Limoges, in their yearly festival, sang:
"San Marceau, pregas per nous,
E nous epingarem per vous."
In the seventeenth century these good people of Limoges were still
holding a festival in honor of the patron saint of their parish, and
singing:
"Saint Martial, priez pour nous,
Et nous, nous danserons pour vous!"
This choral dance formed in the church, and continued to the middle of
the nave, and thence to the square before the edifice, or even into the
cemetery. At a period later than that first mentioned these dances had
instrumental accompaniment and became animated even to the verge of
hysteria. Thus unwittingly the people of the medieval church were
gathering into a loose, but by no means unformed, union the same
materials as the ancients used in the creation of their drama.
The earnest Lewis Riccoboni[5] holds that the Fraternity of the
Gonfalone, founded in 1264, was accustomed to enact the Passion in the
Coliseum, and that these performances lasted till Paul III abolished
them in 1549. Riccoboni argues that not the performance was interdicted,
but the use of the Coliseum. This matters not greatly, since it is
perfectly certain that out-door performances of the Passion took place
long before 1549. Those which were given in France were extremely
interesting and in regard to them we have important records. It is
established beyond doubt that near the end of the fourteenth century a
company of players called the Fraternity of the Passion assisted at the
festivities attendant upon the marriage of Charles VI and Isabella of
Bavaria. Thereafter they gave public performances of their version of
the Passion.
[Footnote 5: "An Historical and Critical Account of the Theaters
in Europe," by Lewis Riccoboni, translated from the Italian.
London, 1741.]
It was too long to be performed without rest, and it was therefore
divided into several days' work. It employed eighty-seven personages and
made use of elaborate machinery. There seems to be little doubt that
some of the scenes were sung, and there is no question that there were
choruses. The stage directions are not the least remarkable part of this
play. The baptism is set forth in this wise: "Here Jesus enters the
waters of Jordan, all naked, and Saint John takes some of the water in
his hand and throws it on the head of Jesus." Saint John says:
"Sir, you now baptized are,
As it suits my simple skill,
Not the lofty rank you fill;
Unmeet for such great service I;
Yet my God, so debonair,
All that's wanting will supply."
"Here Jesus comes out of the river Jordan and throws himself upon his
knees, all naked, before Paradise. Then God, the Father, speaks, and the
Holy Ghost descends, in the form of a white dove, upon the head of
Jesus, and then returns into Paradise: and note that the words of God
the Father be very audibly pronounced and well sounded in three voices,
that is to say, a treble, a counter-treble and a counter-bass, all in
tune; and in this way must the following lines be repeated:
'Hic est filius meus dilectus,
In quo mihi bene complacui.
C'estui-ci est mon fils amé Jesus,
Que bien me plaist, ma plaisance est en lui.'"
Students are offered another choice of dates for the beginning of the
performance of sacred plays in the open air in Italy, to wit, 1304.
Vasari says that in this year a play was enacted on the Arno, that a
"machine representing hell was fixed upon the boats, and that the
subject of the drama was the perennially popular tale of 'Dives and
Lazarus'." But Vasari was not born till 1512, and he neglected to state
where he got his information. The latter years of the fourteenth
century, at any rate, saw the open-air sacred drama in full action, and
that suffices for our purpose.