THE EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF SONG
Song in early Christian times--The age of chivalry--The
troubadours and trouvères--The minnesingers--The mastersingers;
the Lutheran revival--Polyphonic eclipse of song.
I
We think of the first eight or ten centuries of the Christian era as
a chasm between the ancient and the modern. But this is of course not
strictly true, least of all in folk-music. In the church, indeed,
music struggled slowly and painfully, surrounded by doctrine and
law. But in the music, as in the customs, of the people, there was
no break. The apostolic succession of song continued unbroken from
the time of the Greeks to the time of Schubert. Through all the
mediæval period folk-music was flourishing, growing in richness and
in influence steadily up to the time when it entered art music by the
back door, so to speak, stealing into the Catholic ritual. For many
centuries the songs of the old world continued in the new. For the
Christian era did not come all at once. It attained formal dominance
when Constantine adopted it as the official religion of Rome. But it
needed many centuries more before it could attain complete sway over
people’s hearts. Pagan customs and pagan songs were still living and
beautiful. The Christian missionaries gained their hold over the people
by compromising with the past. The old festivals were not rejected
in favor of the new; they were merged with the new. Thus Christmas,
among the Germanic nations, was made to absorb an older festival of
the turning of the sun, and the mistletoe, which had had a profound
religious significance for the Pagans became one of the minor symbols
of the Christian feast and continues to-day an essential part of the
Yuletide festivities, as we know.
And thus it was with the people’s songs. Men’s beliefs were
Christianized, but men’s feelings remained Pagan. And the two existed
side by side for centuries without trouble. Charlemagne ordered a
collection to be made of German songs (all of Pagan origin) and did
not feel that there was anything impious in his action. The Pagan was
honored along with the Christian just as, some five centuries later,
the Classical was honored in the Renaissance. But the millennial year
was approaching, when men expected the world to end, or Christ to come
and take personal charge of his Kingdom. And throughout all Christendom
there arose a desire in men to make themselves perfect for the second
coming. And so arose a mania for exterminating all that remained of the
old world. Charlemagne’s son, Ludwig the Pious, despised the German
songs his father had collected. And it was so all over Europe. In
these years the last vestiges of Paganism were stamped out, except for
the sweet souvenirs of it which the institution of the mistletoe and
similar symbols have retained.
Pagan songs of the early Christian period were mostly in the hands of
wandering minstrels and storytellers who roamed the world in great
numbers. These men, like the songs they sang, were direct descendants
of the Pagan world. One well accredited theory says that the Italian
minstrels were the gladiators of Roman times, and their descendants.
The last of the Roman gladiatorial shows was held about the beginning
of the fifth century. After that Christian sentiment forbade these
bloody entertainments, and the gladiators, the entertainers _par
excellence_ of Roman times, found themselves without a means of
livelihood. They wandered from town to town, giving exhibitions of
strength and agility in the market places, just as the acrobats do
to this day in European cities. They became a separate caste, almost
a separate race. Inevitably they invented or appropriated songs with
which to entertain their admirers between the acts. Some of them became
itinerant merchants, selling molasses or some other delicacy and
attracting the crowds by their music. Sometimes they had dancing bears,
or camels, or trick monkeys.
In the more serious northern countries--Germany and England--they
were probably the remnants of the old priesthood. Religion has always
needed music as a support, and the old priests were themselves bards,
or had bards in their service to sing their doctrines. As they fell
into disrepute with the advance of Christianity, they had to seek their
living as best they might, and they became minstrels, singing the old
sagas and stories which people still loved. Often they became attached
to the service of the courts. The chronicler Robert Ware says that
the battle of Hastings, in which William the Conqueror subjected the
Saxons, was opened by the minstrel or _jongleur_ Taillefer, attached to
the Norman army, who advanced singing of the fabulous exploits of some
hero of the time and performing feats of agility with his lance and
sword, which struck terror into the Saxons, who thought his dexterity
must be the effect of witchcraft. But more often the minstrels were
popular entertainers, with a collection of tricks--hence the name of
_jongleur_, which means player or trickster, and gives us our English
word ‘juggler.’
Their music had no very exalted status, since it was only a ‘side-line’
to their merchandise or performance. But to the people of the time it
was as important as our orchestral concerts and operas are to us.
For it effected the interchange of art and ideas between province and
province and between nation and nation. The minstrels were rarely the
inventors of the songs they sang. The music of the time was genuine
folk-music and the minstrels only learned and disseminated the popular
songs. But they represented the whole institution of secular music in
the early Christian age.
In their roving life, the minstrels tended to become wretchedly
immoral. They sometimes formed themselves into bands for the acting of
plays, taking women along with them, and these bands became the synonym
for dissolute living. Sometimes they were beggars pure and simple,
willing to get money by any means except working, and purchasable
equally to spread a scandal or commit a murder. They had no home and
no citizenship. In 554 A. D. Childebert promulgated very stringent
laws for the suppression of their licentiousness. Philip Augustus,
King of France, caused them to be expelled from his domains. They were
outside the law and its protection. For centuries they were regarded as
the evil children of another race. A citizen might attack or insult a
minstrel and the latter had no recourse in law, except the privilege of
striking his opponent’s _shadow_. This outlawing of musicians continued
(in the statute books, at least) for many years. There are traces of
it still in certain lands. Even New York state, it is said, has an
unrepealed statute somewhere in its dusty books authorizing the arrest
of ‘common showmen.’
This prejudice, in the early years, seems to have been generally
justified. The lives of the minstrels were certainly dissolute. Their
personal characters had all the unattractive qualities of an inferior
race--to dying for money or favor, fickleness and vindictiveness.
They had to truckle to the great, and flatter the prejudices of the
masses. They had, moreover, the means of making themselves feared
by the knights and barons of whom they demanded money in return for
their music. For if they were allowed to leave the castle disgruntled,
nothing was easier for them than to spread abroad among the people
scandals concerning the great men and ladies, the tale that Sir Knight
was a wife-beater and that his lady was having an affair with her page.
A certain jongleur, Colin Muset, who plied his trade in Lorraine and
Champagne in the thirteenth century, once had occasion to sing the
following ditty to the noble of whom he had asked largess:
‘Lord Count, I have the viol played
Before yourself, within your hall,
And you my service never paid
Nor gave me any wage at all;
’Twas villainy.’
It is not difficult to catch the implied threat in these lines.
But the fickleness and flunkeyism of the minstrels served them well.
When they had been expelled from France because of their libellous
tongues, many of them were invited over to England by William de
Longchamps, bishop of Ely, who governed the kingdom during the absence
of Richard the Lionhearted, and who, anxious to blind the people to the
vices of his régime, hired these singers to proclaim his virtues to the
public. Thus art is continually being called to the glorification of
vice and tyranny. But for such services the minstrels had their reward.
So useful did they make themselves, wherever they went, that they
received increasing marks of respect. When the Christian revival of the
tenth and eleventh centuries came, they made themselves its apostles,
singing the new songs in place of the old. The acting troupes presented
miracle plays on Biblical or traditional religious subjects and were
presently invited by the clergy to perform on the church steps or
even within the church itself. Centuries later they had attained such
dignity that they could organize themselves into guilds under the
protection of the reigning prince. They had their aristocratic and
exclusive labor unions, were employed to organize town bands, and in
many places formed the nuclei for court orchestras.
Of the music of these minstrels in the early centuries we know next
to nothing. There existed nothing at the time that could be called
musical notation, and tradition, if it has brought any of their songs
down to us, has changed them in the course of the centuries. We have,
it is true, a spirited song, supposed to have been written on the
death of Charlemagne, calling on Franks and Romans to lament and honor
the lost sovereign. But this was probably not purely popular in its
origin, else it would not have attained to writing. The words of a few
ditties have been preserved. The celebrated ‘Song of Roland,’ dating
from Charlemagne’s time, was supposed to have been sung as late as the
battle of Poitiers in 1356. But what chiefly assures us of the vigor
of the popular music of the time was the wide variety of types it
contained--patriotic songs, love songs, songs satirical and historical,
and many others. We know also that the music was original and alive,
quite in contrast to that of the church. For when the popular tradition
was taken up by the aristocratic Troubadours and Trouvères in the
eleventh and twelfth centuries, the melodies had an independent
character that proves a vigorous antecedent development. The old
modes continued to dominate church music up to the fifteenth and even
sixteenth centuries. But the songs of the Troubadours and Trouvères are
often written in the modern major scale. The popular music of the ninth
and tenth centuries had undergone the development that the church did
not attain until five hundred years later.
We know rather more concerning the instruments used by the wandering
minstrels. They were of all the types which have since furnished out
the modern orchestra. The harp, a remnant of the very earliest times,
was favored by the more aristocratic musicians and steadily became
enlarged as the technique of music widened. The lute (much like the
modern guitar), most popular of amateur instruments in the time of the
Renaissance, was widely used. All kinds of pipes, ancestors of the
wood-wind instruments of our orchestras, flourished in a great variety
of styles. And the incipient violin was represented by the rota, rebek,
and vielle, figuring under a multitude of different names. Like the
Saxon language during the Norman domination in England, popular music
developed in the dark, without official sanction, finally coming forth,
strong and mature, from its hiding and carrying everything before it.
II
With the approach of the millennial year we find the beginnings of
that institution which was to enframe all the life of the later middle
ages--Chivalry. The first military games and tourneys appear in the
reign of Charles the Bald, in the ninth century. From that time on,
life became more pretentious, more individual, more refined. The
chivalric ideal was professedly Christian. It preached what the Pagan
could never have understood--reverence for womanhood and respect for
the weak. Knights gained the church’s special sanction when they
devoted themselves to righting wrongs and rescuing women in distress.
The tender poetry which in early mediæval times became attached to
the figure of the Madonna, was now extended to all women--at least to
all women of social standing. Because a woman had been chosen as the
Mother of God all women were regarded as holy in her likeness. With
this changed attitude toward the weaker sex there came a multitude of
delicate shades of sentiment and an exaggerated devotion that would
have seemed childish to the ancient Greeks. It was common for the
Troubadours to profess the most ecstatic love for some woman of high
rank, who was hardly expected to do more than smile in return. Love, in
its more fanciful aspects, became the mania of the age.
It is not surprising, then, that the nobles of the time took up love,
one might almost say, as an avocation. They had nothing to do, much of
the time, but cultivate the fine arts. They caught the trick of making
verses and melodies. It was natural that love should be the chief
theme of their songs. And in Provence, the southeastern part of modern
France, there arose toward the end of the eleventh century, the cult or
institutions of the Troubadours. The Troubadours were primarily nobles,
cultivating the arts as a pastime. But many men of lower rank also took
up the fashion, winning their way through the beauty of their song. All
that we regard as most typical of French art was in their music and
verses--delicacy of wit and fancy, beauty of form, purity of diction.
They represented the utmost refinement to which their age attained.
They did not, like the jongleurs, accept money for their singing,
though they were proud to receive gifts from lords and ladies whom they
praised. But they often retained the jongleurs in their service. They
seem to have had ambitions of spreading their reputations as composers
and, as it was unbecoming their rank to sing in the market-places, they
hired jongleurs, as personal servants, to do it for them. Thus the
wandering minstrel of the ninth century, while losing something of his
artistic preëminence, gained no little in social dignity. Some gained
high reputation. We recall the story of Blondel, minstrel to Richard
the Lionhearted, who, when his liege lord was a prisoner in Germany
on his return from the Holy Land, sought him far and wide and made
himself known by his singing outside the castle, later bringing help
and liberty to his king.
In the north of France flourished the Trouvères, similar to the
Troubadours of the south. They were less delicate in touch, less
polished, but far more serious, frequently composing, in their own
fashion, works of science and history, theology and philosophy. Among
the Troubadours and Trouvères were Count Guillaume of Poitiers,
Count Thibaut of Champagne, King of Navarre, and Adam de la Halle.
The last named was not of noble blood, but gained high standing as
singer to the Count of Artois. In Spain, as well as in France, the
institution of courtly song took root and the noble singers were known
as _Trobadores_. In Italy the singer was known as _Trovatore_, though
the Provençal song did not gain much vogue in the land which was being
stirred by the awakening of the Renaissance. The Trouvères, through the
Norman court of London, influenced the native minstrelsy of England,
thus spreading over half of Europe the fame of the Provençal song.
The variety of artistic forms cultivated by the Troubadours and
Trouvères was great. Of them we can distinguish the dramatic works,
the romances, the stories or _fabliaux_, and the lyric works proper.
All of these, excepting, perhaps, the dramatic works, were at least in
part sung to the accompaniment of a musical instrument. The romances
sometimes approximated the length of epics, extending to 20,000 lines
or more. Of the romances there is one charming and widely known example
in ‘Aucassin and Nicolette,’ a long story of love and adventure,
frequently interrupted with a lovely song. It is probable that these
romances were recited in a somewhat formal manner through the more
narrative parts, perhaps chanted in the emotional sections, leading
up by means of a more and more musical delivery to the lyrics, which
undoubtedly had their set melodies. The fabliaux were short and witty
stories, usually satirical when not actually indecent. The lyrical
poems were divided by their singers into many classes, the distinctions
being largely nominal or fanciful. We can recall the canzonets, or
love-songs, including the serenade (the ‘evening song’) and the aubade
(‘morning song’). The _pastourelle_, or conventionalized song of
shepherd life, became the Pastoral of the Golden Age of France, one
of the most typical art-forms of the pre-Revolutionary period. There
were further the _sirvantes_, written to praise some beneficent prince;
the roundelays, with a set refrain after each verse or stanza; and the
dance songs, intended to be sung actually during dancing. Then there
were the _tenzone_, contentious songs, usually in dialog, often set
debates on some nice point of love. Sometimes the _tenzone_ were little
masterpieces of satire. One, composed by a monk, has been preserved
to us. It represents a debate or trial, in which the monks accuse the
women of having stolen the art of painting invented for ecclesiastical
purposes and having applied it to their cheeks. The women reply that
the monks are no worse off because their sex is able to cover the
wrinkles under their eyes. Finally St. Peter and St. Lawrence adjudge
that the women shall be allowed from the ages of twenty to thirty-five
to paint in. But, adds the poet, ‘the contract was soon broken by the
women: they lay on more red and white than was ever used for a votive
painting and have in consequence raised the price of saffron and other
dye-stuffs.’
We should not leave the Troubadours without referring to the _Cours
d’amour_, or Courts of Love, which were supposed to have been held, in
all solemnity, during the middle ages. This institution, constituted
like a court of law, heard nice questions as to conduct in love, and
gave decisions for one or the other party, decreeing how the lover
and his lady should act in all conceivable situations. As a matter of
fact, it is extremely doubtful whether such courts were actually held,
but they were at least a fanciful institution of the time and are
represented in many of the songs. It has been thought by some that the
courts were actually convened and that noble ladies and their courtiers
came from all over Europe to submit the fruits of their experience
and pass upon some such solemn question as: ‘Is it between lovers, or
between husband and wife, that the greatest affection, the liveliest
attachment, exist?’
At all events, the courts of love existed in the songs of the
Troubadours. For instance, one complainant brings the following
question, presented in the form of a song by a Troubadour:
‘A knight was in love with a lady who was already engaged, but she
promised him her favor in case she should ever happen to lose the love
of him who was then her lover. A short time subsequent to this the lady
and her adorer were married. The knight then laid claim to the love of
the young bride, who resisted the claim, maintaining that she had not
lost the love of him who had become her husband.’ The judgment in this
case was supposed to have been passed by Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine,
who was later to become the wife of Henry II of England. She refers
to a previous judgment, which is regarded as having all the force
of a precedent in law, and says: ‘We venture not to contradict the
decree of the Countess of Champagne, who, by a solemn judgment, has
pronounced that true love cannot exist between a married couple. We
therefore approve that the lady in question bestow the love which she
has promised.’
III
Germany, at this time, was hardly behind France in civilization and
refinement of manners. It was natural, then, that the courtly song
should find its way into Germany. In South Germany--Bavaria and
Swabia--the indigenous folk-song continued to dominate. But in the
northern provinces the influence of the Trouvères was strongly felt
by way of Flanders and the Lower Rhine. The noble singers here called
themselves _Minnesinger_--or ‘Singers of Love.’ Their songs are almost
as pure and refined in artistic structure as those of Provence, but
their subject matter is more earnest and scholarly. In place of the
fanciful courtly compliments paid by the southern French singers to
their ladies, we find that deep and sincere reverence for womanhood
which Tacitus noted among the German barbarians and which continued
through the centuries.
The lyrical songs of the Minnesingers were divided into three classes:
the Lied, or song; the Lerch, or lay; and the Spruch, or proverb.
The difference, musically, was mainly a matter of form, rigid laws
governing the formation of the strophes. The Lied was the mostly purely
lyrical of the three. The Lerch was more general in subject-matter,
partaking sometimes of the narrative. The Spruch was essentially one of
the German proverbs which so richly fill the language even to this day,
but it was usually developed to make a somewhat lengthy stanza. The
central idea of the proverb, its simile or its ethical substance, would
be repeated and enlarged upon, becoming lyrical in character though
retaining the idiomatic directness and simplicity of the original. Thus
the Minnesong tended to keep a homely character which the Provençal lay
never had.
Among the famous Minnesingers (who were also poets in the modern
sense) were Wolfram von Eschenbach and Walther von der Vogelweide. Both
are familiar to all lovers of Wagner. The former is one of the chief
characters in the opera _Tannhäuser_. He appears as the pure lover of
Elizabeth, in contrast to Tannhäuser, whose sensual and pagan character
is shown by his affair with the unholy goddess Venus. In the second
act of the opera is shown one of the tournaments of song which were
characteristic of the age. Tannhäuser, Wolfram, and others, sing the
praises of love, each revealing his personal character in the attitude
he takes toward the great passion. Wolfram is the genuine Minnesinger,
idealizing the object of his devotion, insisting upon her divinity (her
likeness to the Virgin Mary), and upon the fleshless, unsensual nature
of love in its true estate. One gathers, also, from a hearing of the
opera, that he was a typical Minnesinger in that his song was something
of a bore. Certainly the Minnesongs, in their ambling lengthiness,
would bring sleepiness to a modern audience. But Wolfram, we must
remember, was not only a courtly minstrel, but a great epic poet, one
of the great figures in German literature.
Walther von der Vogelweide, perhaps the most inspired lyricist of
his time, figures by name in _Die Meistersinger_. Walther, the hero,
candidate for the degree of Meistersinger, is asked who taught him his
art. He replies that he learned it from Walther von der Vogelweide and
from the birds. This causes the Mastersingers to shake their heads, for
inspiration has little part in their formal music.
The last of the Minnesingers, and one of the most famous, was Heinrich
von Meissen, called Frauenlob--‘Praiser of Women.’ His songs were so
ardent in their idealization of womanhood that it is related how the
women of Mayence, when the singer died, bore him to his grave and
poured over it, mingled with their tears, the richest of Rhenish wines.
Not a few of the songs of the Troubadours, Trouvères, and Minnesingers
have been preserved to us and have been deciphered with great care
by students. It seems certain that the decipherings are in the main
correct. The songs are well worthy of study. Naumann, in his ‘History
of Music,’ gives four harmonized according to modern principles. Unlike
any of the church music of the time, these songs are in the modern
major scale. They are, probably, the earliest melodies preserved
to us which seem to have an affinity with modern music. All music
preceding them, as all the church music following them for at least
two centuries, sounds strange to our ears; we cannot grasp it, much
less enjoy it, without making a conscious allowance for its seemingly
outlandish construction. But the songs of the courtly minstrels might
almost have been written by Schumann or Brahms. It is possible, of
course, that they have been somewhat modernized in transcription. But
the fact remains that they are predominantly in the modern major scale
and that their turns of phrase show a feeling for melody as such in a
way never revealed by the church composers until after Palestrina’s
time.
The loveliness of these songs grows on one. We must, perhaps, make a
preliminary allowance for the length of their lines and for a certain
aimlessness which seems to reside in the melody. The musicians of
the time did not feel accent and metre so strongly as we do and the
regular sing-song of contrasting lines (which sometimes mars modern
lyrics) was hardly felt in their songs. They flow lightly and smoothly;
their phrases are distinguished by a pause rather than by a system
of balancing and contrasting. They must be delivered with the utmost
repose, in transparent flowing tones that never betray the breath
behind them. There must be hardly any accentuation and very slight use
of dynamics. Artistic construction, in the more rigid modern sense,
is not to be found in them; they have no ‘climax point,’ obviously
prepared, with passages leading ‘up to’ and ‘down from’ it. They are
rather like the softest breeze in the morning of a sunny summer day.
They breathe the spirit of the following lovely verses by Walther von
der Vogelweide:
‘Love is neither man nor woman,
Soul it hath not, nor yet body,
And no earthly sign or token;
Though the tongue of man hath named it,
Never mortal eye hath seen it.
Yet without it can no creature
Win Heaven’s pitying grace and favor;
Nor where love is will there linger
Aught of fraud or baseness ever;
To the traitor, the false-hearted,
Love hath come not, cometh never.’
But a profound change was coming over society, which wiped out all
vestiges of chivalric song. The complete failure of the Crusades
was one of the obvious blows dealt the institution of Chivalry. The
religious upheavals against the dominance of the church of Rome--those
of the Hussites in Bohemia, in the fifteenth century; of the Lutherans
in Germany and of the English under Henry VIII in the sixteenth--these,
apart from their religious aspect, denoted a spirited rising of the
populace to self-consciousness and concerted action. The spread of
knowledge and intellectual curiosity established lines of communication
all over Europe and diminished the importance of the courts as centres
of culture. With this came a growth of manufacture and commerce
which raised to importance people very different from the gentle
Minnesingers. In the Germany of the sixteenth century the mercantile
middle class came to be of social importance, and around them grew up a
new art of song.
IV
The era of the middle-class or Burgher dominance in the German cities
is represented, in music, by the institution of the _Meistersang_
(master song). The Meistersang was the middle-class replica of the
Minnesang. It arose shortly after the natural death of the Minnesang,
early in the fourteenth century, originating, strangely enough, at
Mayence, where Heinrich Frauenlob, the last of the great Minnesingers,
died. The Minnesang, in fact, provided most of the forms and ideals
for the Mastersong--at least in the beginning. But the era of isolated
castles and wandering minstrels was not that of mercantile Germany,
with strongly walled and independent cities, serving as stopping places
for immense caravans coming from Italy and the far east. For these
cities the merchant and artisan class held the purse-strings. They were
the urban aristocrats. The Muses had perforce to eat from their hands.
The Burghers, being not only shrewd and practical, but prevented by
business reasons from wandering the earth in search of fair ladies,
organized their music in very formal fashion. They held regular singing
contests at which aspiring musicians were heard and criticized. When
these aspirants had proved their ability both to compose and to sing to
the satisfaction of their elders they were admitted as Mastersingers.
But the examination was rigid and the organization or guild of the
Mastersingers was jealous. Inasmuch as it controlled the acceptance
or rejection of candidates, it could set the rules. And, being thus
constantly called upon to exercise its superiority, it tended to
solidify its artistic principles into set rules of the most rigid
character. The verses of each type of song must be organized in a set
way. The music had to be made in accordance with the accepted practice.
Certain transitions and ornaments were prohibited--not only regarded as
less desirable than others, but ruled out under all circumstances. At
the trials, which were usually held in the churches, the candidate’s
song was judged by from one to four judges, called Markers, who were
concealed from his view by a curtain. The judgment was delivered not
according to the _beauty_ of the song, but strictly according to the
number of mistakes the singer had made, with reference to the rules of
the guild. It is hardly to be wondered at, then, that the songs of the
Meistersingers were dry and uninspired. To musical learning they may
have contributed something. But to the art of music, on its poetical
side, they gave next to nothing. They show, however, a certain clumsy
fancy, as in the titles of the following songs: ‘Maidenly Grace,’ ‘The
Nightingale,’ ‘The Glutton,’ ‘A Monkey Tune,’ and ‘The Pointed Arrow.’
The institution of the Mastersong, beginning in Mayence in the
fourteenth century, spread over the greater part of Germany, as far as
the Baltic Sea, and flourished for nearly four centuries. One guild was
in existence at Ulm as late as 1839. The most famous of all the guilds
is of course that of Nuremberg, one of the richest German cities of
late mediæval times. And the most famous of the Mastersingers is the
Nuremberg poet, Hans Sachs, ‘_Schumacher und Poet dazu_.’ Sachs, like
Wolfram von Eschenbach, is a landmark in German literature. His output
of vigorous homely poems was enormous, and the support he gave to the
Lutheran Reformation in its early days contributed in no small measure
to its propagation among the simple people.
But though the mastersong was musically sterile, the German folk-song,
which had been vigorously developing through the centuries, now came
to brilliant flower. The Lutheran Reformation was, as we have said, a
popular movement. Without the hearty support and understanding of the
masses it could never have succeeded. And Luther, understanding this,
sought to draw the congregation as closely as possible into the church
service. His chief means were the reading of the Bible and the liturgy
in the native tongue instead of Latin, and the congregational singing
of chorales. Hymns, as they are sung now in Protestant churches, were
almost unknown in the Roman church. Their introduction was a complete
innovation of the Lutheran movement. But Luther understood that
congregational hymns could not be imported from another country and
engrafted on his people. So he took the folk-songs that were actually
being sung by the people and wrote devotional words to fit them. He
caused many other tunes to be written in the folk-manner and in all
probability wrote some himself (including the famous ‘Luther’s Hymn,’
‘A Mighty Fortress is our God’). These hymns spoke with a familiar
voice of the people and were one of the powerful sources of strength to
the church in its early days of persecution.
The purely musical results of this introduction of folk-song into
the church service were very great. From Luther’s time onward the
chorale--profound, dignified, and solemn--was the spiritual basis of
German music. By it German music became emancipated from the Italian.
The German church mothered its own musicians, greatest of whom was
Johann Sebastian Bach. And the German chorale was one of the two great
influences on later German song. From the ‘Spiritual Songs’ of Johann
Sebastian Bach, which are nothing more than solo chorales, through the
songs of the same name composed by his son, Carl Philipp Emanuel, to
the direct precursors of Schubert, we see a direct line of succession.
If the German music preceding Schubert was serious, closely knit,
firmly based, we must lay it in large part to the influence of the
German folk-song which had the same German qualities--and especially
those of simplicity and honesty.
It was not solely in German Protestant music, however, that popular
song became merged. Much earlier than this time it had exerted its
influence on the music of the Roman church. As early as the fourteenth
century it had become the fashion among church composers to use popular
tunes for their masses. It is hardly probable that the motive was to
draw the people closer into the church service by giving them a tune
they were familiar with. In fact, the church had several times been
obliged to rule that the people should not sing in the service, except
on certain days, before and after the ritual. But the church composers
of the thirteenth century and after were in the habit of writing florid
counterpoint around a set melody, called the _cantus firmus_, and it
became the fashion not to invent the cantus firmus for one’s self but
to borrow it from any source at hand. In the course of time composers
hit upon the scheme of borrowing secular tunes. Dufay, at the beginning
of the fifteenth century, used one of the tunes of the people, _L’homme
armé_, which has been called ‘the most popular tune of the Middle
Ages.’ Such a universal favorite did it become that it was used in
masses by nearly every church composer from Josquin de Près to Orlando
di Lasso.
V
It is quite possible that the presence of popular tunes in church music
did something to aid the approach of the modern major modes (which had
already been widely used by the Troubadours and Minnesingers). But
their influence was at first disguised, for the _cantus firmus_ was
usually sung very slowly, in order to allow the florid counterpoint
to grow around it, and hence usually became indistinguishable to the
hearer. Certainly here the popular art had no such direct and inspiring
effect as in the Lutheran revival. Forces were working slowly toward
a great change in men’s art, as in men’s life and thoughts. Popular
art underwent an eclipse for a time, to emerge later in a new world,
dominant and victorious.
The eclipse came on slowly,--a general twilight all along the line of
battle. Beginning with the twelfth (even the eleventh) century, men had
been experimenting with counterpoint and polyphony, working out Chinese
puzzles in the combination of two and more voices. Gradually they
learned how to make these puzzles beautiful as well as ingenious. Then
came the age of the great Catholic church composers, of whom Orlando di
Lasso and Palestrina are the most famous. With them melody no longer
had its former place. There was much more to think of than the beauty
of a single voice. The whole art was more austere and more ethereal
than popular songs had been.
And the polyphonic art began to dominate secular music. In place of the
fluent melody of the Minnesinger came the part-song and madrigal. This
was built on the same principles as the sacred mass, but its character
was naturally lighter and more lively in movement. The part-song was
the ‘catch’ of Shakespeare’s time and its popularity is shown by the
frequent reference to it in Shakespeare’s plays. In ‘Twelfth Night’ Sir
Andrew, Sir Toby, and the fool commence a catch (doubtless known to
the audience): ‘Hold thy Peace, Thou Knave,’ Sir Andrew expostulating,
‘How can I begin if I hold my peace?’ The madrigals were not always
of so sportive a character. Sometimes they were love-songs or songs
of nature, showing keen poetic feeling. Often they were masterpieces
of polyphony and canon. But though much learning went into their
construction, their spirit was that of the popular song. The most
interesting of early part-songs is one known as ‘Sumer is icumen in,’
a Northumbrian canon for six voices, which has been proved to have
been composed not later than 1228. It is a delightfully melodious
piece, written in fairly good harmony, in the major mode, typical of
the freedom and gracefulness of popular music of the time in contrast
to the rigor of the ecclesiastical works. From the early part of the
thirteenth century to the middle of the seventeenth madrigals were
written and were the principal form of secular vocal music.
During this time, of course, folk-song continued. But it was, as it had
been several centuries earlier, but a poor relation of music, dwelling
among the despised and rejected of men. It was doubtless during this
period that the earlier specimens of the folk-songs now preserved to
us assumed something like their present form. But so far as outward
history is concerned secular song is contained in the madrigal (which
is not ‘song’ in our sense), and in the mastersong of Germany, which
was almost wholly lacking in inspiration. When the homophonic song once
more awoke to its place, the world had experienced the profound changes
of the Renaissance and the Reformation. Secular life had outstripped
the religious in variety and intellectual interest. The church was
powerful still, but it was no longer the centre of gravity for all
men’s activity. So song found itself drawn into the vortex and forced
to serve men’s pleasures and vanities in innumerable forms. What these
forms were and how they tended to the Song proper we shall see in the
next chapter.