The Artistic Impulse
The non-existence of the drama in the Middle Ages is one of the
strikingly significant deficiencies of the period. The illiterate
condition of the people, and even of the nobility, the fragmentary state
of governments, the centralizing of small and dependent communities
around the feet of petty tyrants, the frequency of wars large and small,
and the devotion of men to skill in the use of arms, made it impossible
that attention should be bestowed upon so polite and sedentary a form of
amusement as the drama.
It is generally held that the church made the first movement toward the
abolition of the drama by placing its ban on the plays handed down from
the Greeks and the Romans, partly because of their inculcation of
reverence for heathen deities and partly because of the shameless
indecencies which had invaded them. But this could have been only one of
many causes which operated in keeping the play out of Europe for so many
centuries. When it was revived, as we have seen, in the form of the
liturgical drama and afterward of the sacred representation, it bore
little or no resemblance to the splendid art product bequeathed to the
world by the Greeks.
The sudden and glorious return of the dramatic subjects of the Greeks to
the stage of medieval Europe marks the beginning of the modern era. When
the Italians turned to the stories of ancient fable for material for
their secular drama they were without doubt quite unconscious of the
importance of the step they were taking. It is only the reflective eye
of retrospective study that can discern all the significant elements
happily combined in this event by the overmastering laws of human
progress.
To enter into a detailed examination of the matter would demand of us a
review of the whole movement known as the Renaissance. This, however, is
not essential to an appreciation of the precise nature of the step from
the sacred representation to the lyric drama and its importance in
laying the foundations of opera. This momentous step was taken late in
the fifteenth century with the performance of Angelo Poliziano's "Favola
di Orfeo" at the Court of Mantua to celebrate the return of the Cardinal
Gonzaga. The Italian authorities are by no means agreed as to the
importance of this production. Rossi says:[10]
"The circle of plot in the religious drama, at first restricted to
the life of Christ, had been gradually broadened. Some writers,
wishing to adapt attractive themes to the aristocratic gatherings of
the princely courts, availed themselves of the very form of the
sacred drama of the people in the treatment of subjects entirely
profane. Thus did Poliziano, whose 'Orfeo,' as the evident
reproduction of that form in a mythological subject is an isolated
type in the history of the Italian drama."
[Footnote 10: "Storia della Letteratura Italiana." Milan, 1905.]
Alessandro D'Ancona[11] in his monumental work on the sources of the
Italian play says:
"The 'Favola di Orfeo,' although it drew its argument from
mythology, was hardly dissimilar in its intrinsic character from the
sacred plays, and was moreover far from that second form of tragedy
which was later given to it, not by the author himself, but probably
by Tebaldeo, to serve the dramatic tastes of Ferrara. So then the
'Fable of Orpheus' is a prelude, a passage, an attempt at the
transformation of the dramatic spectacle so dear to the people, and
while it detaches itself in subject from the religious tradition, it
is not yet involved in the meshes of classic imitation. If, indeed,
from the stage setting and from the music introduced into it, it is
already an artistic spectacle, it cannot be called an example of
ancient art restored. It was a theatrical ornament to a prince's
festival."
[Footnote 11: "Origini del Teatro in Italia." Firenze, 1877.]
Perhaps both of these admirable Italian authors had their eyes too
closely fixed on the spoken drama to perceive the immense significance
of Poliziano's "Orfeo" in the field of opera. If they had paused for a
moment to consider that Peri and Caccini chose the same story for the
book of their operas, in which the musical departure was even more
significant than the dramatic innovation of Poliziano had been, that
Monteverde utilized the same theme in his epoch-making "Orfeo," and that
for nearly two centuries the poetic and musical suggestiveness of the
Orpheus legend made it hold its grip on the affections of composers,
they might have realized better the relative value of the achievement of
Poliziano.
Let us then briefly review the influences which led to the selection of
the subject and the character of its literary investiture by the Italian
poet. The nature of the music and the manner of performance will have to
be examined separately. The transformation which came upon Italian life
and thought under the influence of the revival of the study of ancient
literature and philosophy has been extensively examined in numerous
works. But at this point we must recall at least the particular effect
which it had on Italian poetry. The creations of Dante might seem to us
tremendous enough in themselves to have originated an era, but as a
matter of fact they marked the conclusion of one. They were the full and
final fruition of medieval thought, and after them Italian literature
entered upon a new movement.
Petrarch was the father of the revival of ancient literature. Not only
was he himself a profound student of it, but he suggested to Boccaccio
that line of study which governed the entire intellectual life of the
author of the "Decameron." With the application of Boccaccio to the
translation of Homer into Latin we perceive a singular illustration of
the trend of the classic devotion of the time. Despite the fact that the
"Divina Commedia" had magnificently demonstrated the beauty of Italian
as a literary medium, fourteenth century scholars regarded the language
with contempt. Pride in their connection with historic Rome, as well as
the environment of places associated with his personality, made Virgil
their literary deity. The ancient language of the eternal city and of
the "Æneid" was for them the only suitable literary instrument. That
they played upon it as amateurs seems never to have occurred to them.
The study of Greek which followed the activities of Petrarch was at
first confined to a narrow circle and it never spread far beyond the
limits of university walls. But the study of Greek thought and ideals,
as obtained from the ancient works, speedily found its way through the
entire society of cultivated Italians. The people had their own poets
and their own songs, but the aristocracy, which was highly cultivated,
plunged into the contemplation of Grecian art. The influence of all this
on Italian literature was deep and significant.
But there were other significant facts in the history of this era. Italy
was not yet a nation. She had no central point of fixture and no system
of radiation. She was divided into a group of small centers, each with
its own dominating forces. Naples was unlike Rome; Florence was unlike
Venice; Milan was different from all. Each had its characteristics, yet
all had points of similarity. All were steeped in the immorality of the
age, and all embarked with equal enthusiasm in the pursuit of classic
learning. The strange combination of physical vice with intellectual
appetite produced throughout Italy what Symonds has happily called an
"esthetic sensuality." The Italian's intellectual pursuits satisfied a
craving quite sensuous in its nature.
It is not at all astonishing that in these conditions we find no
national epic and no national drama, but a gradual growth of a poetry
saturated with physical realism and the final appearance of a dramatic
form equipped with the most potent charms of sensuous art. It was in
such a period that a special kind of public was developed. The
"Cortegiano" of Castiglione, Bembo's "Asolani," the "Camaldolese
Discourses" of Landino could have been addressed only to social
oligarchies standing on a basis of polite culture.
In such conditions the stern ideals of early Christianity were thrust
into obscurity and the sensuous charms of a hybrid paganism, a bastard
child of ancient Greece and medieval Italy herself, excited the desires
of scholars and dilettanti from the lagoons of Venice to the Bay of
Naples. In the midst of this era it is not remarkable that we hear the
pipe of Pan, slightly out of tune and somewhat clogged by artifice, as
it was later in the day of Rousseau, but none the less playing the
ancient hymns to Nature and the open air life.
Jacopo Sannazzaro (1458-1530) embodied the ideals of the time in his
"Arcadia," in which Symonds finds the literary counterparts of the
frescoes of Gozzo and Lippo Lippi. At any rate the poem contains the
whole apparatus of nymphs and satyrs transplanted to Italian landscape
and living a life of commingled Hellenism and Italianism. The eloquence
of Sannazzaro is that of the Arcadian the world over. He sighs and weeps
and calls upon dryads, hamadryads and oreads to pity his consuming
passion. When he sees his mistress she is walking in the midst of
pastoral scenes where satyrs lurk behind every bush and the song of the
shepherd is heard in the land. Sannazzaro's "Arcadia" was the
inspiration of Sir Philip Sidney's. It was a natural outburst of the
time and it conveys perfectly the spirit of Italian imaginative thought
in a period almost baffling in the complexity of its character.
It was not strange that in such a time Italian poets should have
discerned in Orpheus the embodiment of their own ideals. There is no
evidence that the Italians of the fifteenth century knew (or at any rate
considered) the true meaning of the Orpheus myth. Of its relation to the
Sun myth and of Euridice as the dawn they give no hint. To them Orpheus
was the embodiment of the Arcadian idea. He was the singer of the hymns
that woke all nature to life. For him the satyr capered and the coy
nymph came bridling from her retreat, the woods became choral and the
streams danced in the sunlight to the magic of his pipe. This was the
poetic phase of the general trend of human thought at the time. The
philosophers began by questioning the authority of dogma. Next they
turned for instruction to the ancients, and finally they interrogated
nature. In the course of their development they revolted against the
deadening rule of the church and claimed for the human mind the right to
reason independently. The scientific investigation of natural phenomena
followed almost inevitably and the demonstrations of Giordano Bruno and
Galileo shook the foundations of the church.
In the field of polite literature men turned to nature for their laws of
daily life and believed that in the pastoral kingdom of Theocritus they
had found the promised land. Inevitably it followed that the figure of
Orpheus, singing through the earth, and bringing under his dominion the
beast and the bird, the very trees and stones, should become the picture
of their fondest dreams. He was the hero of Arcady "where all the leaves
are merry." In his presence the dust of dry theology and the cruel ban
of the church against the indulgence of human desires were impossible.
From solemn ecclesiastic prose the world was turned to happy pagan song.
The very music of the church went out into the world and became earthly
in the madrigals of love. The miter and the stole gave way to the buskin
and the pack; and the whole dreamland of Italy peopled itself with
wandering singers wooing nymphs or shepherdesses in landscapes that
would have fired the imagination of a Turner.
And withal the dramatic embodiment of this conception was prepared as a
court spectacle for the enjoyment of fashionable society. Thus we find
ourselves in the presence of conditions not unlike those which produced
the tomfooleries of the court of Louis XVI and the musettes, bergerettes
and aubades of French song.
The production of Poliziano's "Orfeo" may not have seemed to its
contemporaries to possess an importance larger than that which Rossi and
D'Ancona attribute to it; but its proper position in musical history is
at the foundation of the modern opera. Poetically it was the superior of
any lyric work, except perhaps those of Metastasio. Musically it was
radically different in character from the opera, as it was from the
liturgical drama. But none the less it contained some of the germs of
the modern opera. It had its solo, its chorus and its ballet.[12] But
while the characters of these were almost as clearly defined as they are
in Gluck's "Orfeo," their musical basis, as we shall see, was altogether
different. Nevertheless it was distinctly lyric and secular and was
therefore as near the spirit of the popular music of the time as any new
attempt could well approach. It had, too, in embryonic form all that
apparatus for the enchantment of the sense and the beguilement of the
intellect which in the following century was the chief attraction of a
lyric drama, partly opera, partly spectacle and partly ballet.
[Footnote 12: George Hogarth, in his "Memoirs of the Musical
Drama," London, 1838, declares that this "Orfeo" was sung
throughout, but he offers no ground for his assertion, which must
be taken as a mere conjecture based on the character of the text.
Dr. Burney, in his "General History of Music," makes a similar
assertion, but does not support it.]