RISE OF THE GERMAN CANTATA AND PASSION
The history of German Protestant church music in the seventeenth century
and onward is the record of a transformation not less striking and
significant than that which the music of the Catholic Church experienced
in the same period. In both instances forms of musical art which were
sanctioned by tradition and associated with ancient and rigorous
conceptions of devotional expression were overcome by the superior powers
of a style which was in its origin purely secular. The revolution in the
Protestant church music was, however, less sudden and far less complete.
It is somewhat remarkable that the influences that prevailed in the music
of the Protestant Church--the Church of discontent and change--were on
the whole more cautious and conservative than those that were active in
the music of the Catholic Church. The latter readily gave up the old
music for the sake of the new, and so swiftly readjusted its boundaries
that the ancient landmarks were almost everywhere obliterated. The
Protestant music advanced by careful evolutionary methods, and in the
final product nothing that was valuable in the successive stages through
which it passed was lost. In both cases--Lutheran and Catholic--the
motive was the same. Church music, like secular, demanded a more
comprehensive and a more individual style of expression. The Catholic
musicians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were very clear in
their minds as to what they wanted and how to get it. The brilliant
Italian aria was right at hand in all its glory, and its languishing
strains seemed admirably suited to the appeals which the aggressive
Church was about to make to the heart and the senses. The powers that
ruled in German Protestant worship conceived their aims, consciously or
unconsciously, in a somewhat different spirit. The new musical movement
in German church music was less self-confident, it was uncertain of its
final direction, at times restrained by reverence for the ancient forms
and ideals, again wantonly breaking with tradition and throwing itself
into the arms of the alluring Italian culture.
The German school entered the seventeenth century with three strong and
pregnant forms to its credit, _viz._, the choral, the motet (essentially
a counterpart of the Latin sixteenth-century motet), and organ music.
Over against these stood the Italian recitative and aria, associated with
new principles of tonality, harmony, and structure. The former were the
stern embodiment of the abstract, objective, liturgic conception of
worship music; the latter, of the subjective, impassioned, and
individualistic. Should these ideals be kept apart, or should they be in
some way united? One group of German musicians would make the Italian
dramatic forms the sole basis of a new religious art, recognizing the
claims of the personal, the varied, and the brilliant, in ecclesiastical
music as in secular. Another group clung tenaciously to the choral and
motet, resisting every influence that might soften that austere rigor
which to their minds was demanded by historic association and liturgic
fitness. A third group was the party of compromise. Basing their culture
upon the old German choir chorus, organ music, and people's hymn-tune,
they grafted upon this sturdy stock the Italian melody. It was in the
hands of this school that the future of German church music lay. They saw
that the opportunities for a more varied and characteristic expression
could not be kept out of the Church, for they were based on the
reasonable cravings of human nature. Neither could they throw away those
grand hereditary types of devotional utterance which had become
sanctified to German memory in the period of the Reformation's storm and
stress. They adopted what was soundest and most suitable for these ends
in the art of both countries, and built up a form of music which strove
to preserve the high traditions of national liturgic song, while at the
same time it was competent to gratify the tastes which had been
stimulated by the recent rapid advance in musical invention. Out of this
movement grew the Passion music and the cantata of the eighteenth
century, embellished with all the expressive resources of the Italian
vocal solo and the orchestral accompaniment, solidified by a contrapuntal
treatment derived from organ music, and held unswervingly to the very
heart of the liturgy by means of those choral tunes which had become
identified with special days and occasions in the church year.
The nature of the change of motive in modern church music, which broke
the exclusive domination of the chorus by the introduction of solo
singing, has been set forth in the chapter on the later mass. The most
obvious fact in the history of this modification of church music in
Germany is that the neglect in many quarters of the strong old music of
choral and motet in favor of a showy concert style seemed to coincide
with that melancholy lapse into formalism and dogmatic intolerance which,
in the German Church of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
succeeded to the enthusiasms of the Reformation era. But it does not
follow, as often assumed, that we have here a case of cause and effect.
It is worth frequent reiteration that no style of music is in itself
religious. There is no sacredness, says Ruskin, in round arches or in
pointed, in pinnacles or buttresses; and we may say with equal pertinence
that there is nothing sacred _per se_ in sixteenth-century counterpoint,
Lutheran choral, or Calvinist psalm-tune. The adoption of the new style
by so many German congregations was certainly not due to a spirit of
levity, but to the belief that the novel sensation which their aesthetic
instincts craved was also an element in moral edification. From the point
of view of our more mature experience, however, there was doubtless a
deprivation of something very precious when the German people began to
lose their love for the solemn patriotic hymns of their faith, and when
choirs neglected those celestial harmonies with which men like Eccard and
Hasler lent these melodies the added charm of artistic decoration. There
would seem to be no real compensation in those buoyant songs, with their
thin accompaniment, which Italy offered as a substitute for a style grown
cold and obsolete. But out of this decadence, if we call it such, came
the cantatas and Passions of J. S. Bach, in which a reflective age like
ours, trained to settle points of fitness in matters of art, finds the
most heart-searching and heart-revealing strains that devotional feeling
has ever inspired. These glorious works could never have existed if the
Church had not sanctioned the new methods in music which Germany was so
gladly receiving from Italy. Constructed to a large extent out of secular
material, these works grew to full stature under liturgic auspices, and
at last, transcending the boundaries of ritual, they became a connecting
bond between the organized life of the Church and the larger religious
intuitions which no ecclesiastical system has ever been able to
monopolize.
Such was the gift to the world of German Protestantism, stimulated by
those later impulses of the Renaissance movement which went forth in
music after their mission had been accomplished in plastic art. In the
Middle Age, we are told, religion and art lived together in brotherly
union; Protestantism threw away art and kept religion, Renaissance
rationalism threw away religion and retained art. In painting and
sculpture this is very nearly the truth; in music it is very far from
being true. It is the glory of the art of music, that she has almost
always been able to resist the drift toward sensuousness and levity, and
where she has apparently yielded, her recovery has been speedy and sure.
So susceptible is her very nature to the finest touches of religious
feeling, that every revival of the pure spirit of devotion has always
found her prepared to adapt herself to new spiritual demands, and out of
apparent decline to develop forms of religious expression more beautiful
and sublime even than the old.
Conspicuous among the forms with which the new movement endowed the
German Church was the cantata. This form of music may be traced back to
Italy, where the monodic style first employed in the opera about 1600 was
soon adopted into the music of the salon. The cantata was at first a
musical recitation by a single person, without action, accompanied by a
few plain chords struck upon a single instrument. This simple design was
expanded in the first half of the seventeenth century into a work in
several movements and in many parts or voices. Religious texts were soon
employed and the church cantata was born. The cantata was eagerly taken
up by the musicians of the German Protestant Church and became a
prominent feature in the regular order of worship. In the seventeenth
century the German Church cantata consisted usually of an instrumental
introduction, a chorus singing a Bible text, a "spiritual aria" (a
strophe song, sometimes for one, sometimes for a number of voices), one
or two vocal solos, and a choral. This immature form (known as "spiritual
concerto," "spiritual dialogue" or "spiritual act of devotion"),
consisting of an alternation of Biblical passages and church or
devotional hymns, flourished greatly in the seventeenth and early part of
the eighteenth centuries. In its complete development in the eighteenth
century it also incorporated the recitative and the Italian aria form,
and carried to their full power the chorus, especially the chorus based
on the choral melody, and the organ accompaniment. By means of the
prominent employment of themes taken from choral tunes appointed for
particular days in the church calendar, especially those days consecrated
to the contemplation of events in the life of our Lord, the cantata
became the most effective medium for the expression of those emotions
called forth in the congregation by their imagined participation in the
scenes which the ritual commemorated. The stanzas of the hymns which
appear in the cantata illustrate the Biblical texts, applying and
commenting upon them in the light of Protestant conceptions. The words
refer to some single phase of religious feeling made conspicuous in the
order for the clay. A cantata is, therefore, quite analogous to the
anthem of the Church of England, although on a larger scale. Unlike an
oratorio, it is neither epic nor dramatic, but renders some mood, more or
less general, of prayer or praise.
We have seen that the Lutheran Church borrowed many features from the
musical practice of the Catholic Church, such as portions of the Mass,
the habit of chanting, and ancient hymns and tunes. Another inheritance
was the custom of singing the story of Christ's Passion, with musical
additions, in Holy Week. This usage, which may be traced back to a remote
period in the Middle Age, must be distinguished from the method,
prevalent as early as the thirteenth century, of actually representing
the events of Christ's last days in visible action upon the stage. The
Passion play, which still survives in Oberammergau in Bavaria, and in
other more obscure parts of Europe, was one of a great number of
ecclesiastical dramas, classed as Miracle Plays, Mysteries, and
Moralities, which were performed under the auspices of the Church for the
purpose of impressing the people in the most vivid way with the reality
of the Old and New Testament stories, and the binding force of doctrines
and moral principles.
The observance out of which the German Passion music of the eighteenth
century grew was an altogether different affair. It consisted of the mere
recitation, without histrionic accessories, of the story of the trial and
death of Christ, as narrated by one of the four evangelists, beginning in
the synoptic Gospels with the plot of the priests and scribes, and in St.
John's Gospel with the betrayal. This narration formed a part of the
liturgic office proper to Palm Sunday, Holy Tuesday, Ash Wednesday, and
Good Friday. According to the primitive use, which originated in the
period of the supremacy of the Gregorian chant, several officers took
part in the delivery. One cleric intoned the evangelist's narrative,
another the words of Christ, and a third those of Pilate, Peter, and
other single personages. The ejaculations of the Jewish priests,
disciples, and mob were chanted by a small group of ministers. The text
was rendered in the simpler syllabic form of the Plain Song. Only in one
passage did this monotonous recitation give way to a more varied,
song-like utterance, _viz._, in the cry of Christ upon the cross, "Eli,
Eli, lama sabachthani," this phrase being delivered in an extended,
solemn, but unrhythmical melody, to which was imparted all the pathos
that the singer could command. The chorus parts were at first sung in
unison, then, as the art of part-writing developed, they were set in
simple four-part counterpoint.
Under the influence of the perfected contrapuntal art of the sixteenth
century there appeared a form now known as the motet Passion, and for a
short time it flourished vigorously. In this style everything was sung in
chorus without accompaniment--evangelist's narrative, words of Christ,
Pilate, and all. The large opportunities for musical effect permitted by
this manner of treatment gained for it great esteem among musicians, for
since this purely musical method of repeating the story of Christ's death
was never conceived as in any sense dramatic, there was nothing
inconsistent in setting the words of a single personage in several parts.
The life enjoyed by this phase of Passion music was brief, for it arose
only a short time before the musical revolution, heralded by the
Florentine monody and confirmed by the opera, drove the mediaeval
polyphony into seclusion.
With the quickly won supremacy of the dramatic and concert solo, together
with the radical changes of taste and practice which it signified, the
chanted Passion and the motet Passion were faced by a rival which was
destined to attain such dimensions in Germany that it occupied the whole
field devoted to this form of art. In the oratorio Passion, as it may be
called, the Italian recitative and aria and the sectional rhythmic chorus
took the place of the unison chant and the ancient polyphony; hymns and
poetic monologues supplemented and sometimes supplanted the Bible text;
and the impassioned vocal style, introducing the new principle of
definite expression of the words, was reinforced by the lately
emancipated art of instrumental music. For a time, these three forms of
Passion music existed side by side, the latest in an immature state; but
the stars in the firmament of modern music were fighting in their courses
for the mixed oratorio style, and in the early part of the eighteenth
century this latter form attained completion and stood forth as the most
imposing gift bestowed by Germany upon the world of ecclesiastical art.
The path which German religious music was destined to follow in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, under the guidance of the new ideas
of expression, was plainly indicated when Heinrich Schuetz, the greatest
German composer of the seventeenth century, and the worthy forerunner of
Bach and Haendel, wrote his "histories" and "sacred symphonies." Born in
1585, he came under the inspiring instruction of G. Gabrieli in Venice in
1609, and on a second visit to Italy in 1628 he became still more imbued
with the dominant tendencies of the age. He was appointed chapel-master
at the court of the Elector of Saxony at Dresden in 1615, and held this
position, with a few brief interruptions, until his death in 1672. He was
a musician of the most solid attainments, and although living in a
transition period in the history of music, he was cautious and respectful
in his attitude toward both the methods which were at that time in
conflict, accepting the new discoveries in dramatic expression as
supplementary, not antagonistic, to the old ideal of devotional music. In
his psalms he employed contrasting and combining choral masses,
reinforced by a band of instruments. In the Symphoniae sacrae are songs
for one or more solo voices, with instrumental obligato, in which the
declamatory recitative style is employed with varied and appropriate
effect. In his dramatic religious works, the "Resurrection," the "Seven
Words of the Redeemer upon the Cross," the "Conversion of Saul," and the
Passions after the four evangelists, Schuetz uses the vocal solo, the
instrumental accompaniment, and the dramatic chorus in a tentative
manner, attaining at times striking effects of definite expression quite
in accordance with modern ideas, while anon he falls back upon the strict
impersonal method identified with the ancient Plain Song and
sixteenth-century motet. Most advanced in style and rich in expression is
the "Seven Words." A feature characteristic of the rising school of
German Passion music is the imagined presence of Christian believers,
giving utterance in chorus to the emotions aroused by the contemplation
of the atoning act. In the "Seven Words" the utterances of Jesus and the
other separate personages are given in arioso recitative, rising at times
to pronounced melody. The tone of the whole work is fervent, elevated,
and churchly. The evangelist and all the persons except Christ sing to an
organ bass,--the words of the Saviour are accompanied by the ethereal
tones of stringed instruments, perhaps intended as an emblematic
equivalent to the aureole in religious paintings. In Schuetz's settings of
the Passion, although they belong to the later years of his life, he
returns to the primitive form, in which the parts of the evangelist and
the single characters are rendered in the severe "collect tone" of the
ancient Plain Song, making no attempt at exact expression of changing
sentiments. Even in these restrained and lofty works, however, his genius
as a composer and his progressive sympathies as a modern artist
occasionally break forth in vivid expression given to the ejaculations of
priests, disciples, and Jewish mob, attaining a quite remarkable warmth
and reality of portrayal. Nevertheless, these isolated attempts at
naturalism hardly bring the Passions of Schuetz into the category of
modern works. There is no instrumental accompaniment, and, most decisive
of all, they are restrained within the limits of the mediaeval conception
by the ancient Gregorian tonality, which is maintained throughout almost
to the entire exclusion of chromatic alteration.
The works of Schuetz, therefore, in spite of their sweetness and dignity
and an occasional glimpse of picturesque detail, are not to be considered
as steps in the direct line of progress which led from the early Italian
cantata and oratorio to the final achievements of Bach and Haendel. These
two giants of the culminating period apparently owed nothing to Schuetz.
It is not probable that they had any acquaintance with his works at all.
The methods and the ideals of these three were altogether different.
Considering how common and apparently necessary in art is the reciprocal
influence of great men, it is remarkable that in the instance of the
greatest German musician of the seventeenth century and the two greatest
of the eighteenth, all working in the field of religious dramatic music,
not one was affected in the slightest degree by the labors of either of
the others. Here we have the individualism of modern art exhibited in the
most positive degree upon its very threshold.
In the Passions of Schuetz we find only the characters of the Bible story,
together with the evangelist's narrative taken literally from the
Gospel,--that is to say, the original frame-work of the Passion music
with the chorus element elaborated. In the latter part of the seventeenth
century the dramatic scheme of the Passion was enlarged by the addition
of the Christian congregation, singing appropriate chorals, and the ideal
company of believers, expressing suitable sentiments in recitatives,
arias, and choruses. The insertion of church hymns was of the highest
importance in view of the relation of the Passion music to the liturgy,
for the more stress was laid upon this feature, the more the Passion, in
spite of its semi-dramatic character, became fitted as a constituent into
the order of service. The choral played here the same part as in the
cantata, assimilating to the prescribed order of worship what would
otherwise be an extraneous if not a disturbing feature. This was
especially the case when, as in the beginning of the adoption of the
choral in the Passion, the hymn verses were sung by the congregation
itself. In Bach's time this custom had fallen into abeyance, and the
choral stanzas were sung by the choir; but this change involved no
alteration in the form or the conception of the Passion performance as a
liturgic act.
The growth of the Passion music from Schuetz to its final beauty and
pathos under Sebastian Bach was by no means constant. In certain
quarters, particularly at Hamburg, the aria in the shallow Italian form
took an utterly disproportionate importance. The opera, which was
flourishing brilliantly at Hamburg about 1700, exercised a perverting
influence upon the Passion to such an extent that the ancient liturgic
traditions were completely abandoned. In many of the Hamburg Passions the
Bible text was thrown away and poems substituted, all of which were of
inferior literary merit, and some quite contemptible. Incredible as it
may seem, the comic element was sometimes introduced, the "humorous"
characters being the servant Malthus whose ear was cut off by Peter, and
a clownish peddler of ointment. It must be said that these productions
were not given in the churches; they are not to be included in the same
category with the strictly liturgic Passions of Sebastian Bach. The
comparative neglect of the choral and also of the organ removes them
altogether from the proper history of German church music.
Thus we see how the new musical forms, almost creating the emotions which
they were so well adapted to express, penetrated to the very inner shrine
of German church music. In some sections, as at Hamburg, the Italian
culture supplanted the older school altogether. In others it encountered
sterner resistance, and could do no more than form an alliance, in which
old German rigor and reserve became somewhat ameliorated and relaxed
without becoming perverted. To produce an art work of the highest order
out of this union of contrasting principles, a genius was needed who
should possess so true an insight into the special capabilities of each
that he should be able by their amalgamation to create a form of
religious music that should be conformed to the purest conception of the
mission of church song, and at the same time endowed with those faculties
for moving the affections which were demanded by the tastes of the new
age. In fulness of time this genius appeared. His name was Johann
Sebastian Bach.