THE CLASSIC SONG AND THE ARIA
Italy and the monodic style--Song in the seventeenth century;
Germany; France--Song in England--The aria--German song in the
eighteenth century; French song in the eighteenth century;
forerunners of Schubert.
I
The last half of the fifteenth century was a period of unrest and
profound change in music. As we have seen,[10] it was in this period
that the old pure style of church music reached its highest perfection
under Palestrina, and, because the resources of the style had been
exhausted, began to give place to the style which we know as modern.
Out of this change grew directly most of the modern musical forms--the
opera, the oratorio, the independent orchestral piece with its
searching out of instrumental resources, and--the Art-Song.
It is one of the vagaries of history that the Art-Song, though it
commenced with definite consciousness about the year 1600, did not
become a firmly established art form for full two centuries. By all
the signs of the times it seems as though it should quickly have
risen to maturity. The humanistic enthusiasm of the Renaissance had
sensitized people to individual emotions and moods--the very material
of the art-song. Singing was universal and had attained a high degree
of technical excellence. And the earliest composers of opera of the
time had hit upon the very principles which Schubert exemplified two
centuries later--the accurate following of the words by expressive
music, independent of ‘pattern’ form. But for various reasons, which
we shall examine presently, the art-song became side-tracked. Within
twenty years of its birth it had been exiled to a dark cellar of
history and its feeble attempts at growth had been smothered by an
institution which presently captured the whole civilized world--the
opera.
So the history of song from 1600 to 1800 is not unlike that of the
five centuries preceding--a delving into the out-of-the-way places
where there is to be found much that is charming and interesting, but
little with broad and conscious artistic drive. Nevertheless, song in
this period does show organic development. The outcast infant in the
cellar does grow and become beautiful. But its growth is that of music
in general. As technical materials and artistic consciousness develop,
song partakes of the common benefits, but only secondarily, here and
there, as the servant picks crumbs from the master’s table.
First of all, in common with music in general, song partook of the
change from the old modes to the major and minor scales. And here,
indeed, it was a leader rather than a follower. We have seen in the
previous chapter how the folk-songs of Provence and of the Rhine
blossomed into a gentle and flowing major mode centuries before the
ecclesiastical music had achieved anything like a feeling for the
tonic. And it was perhaps partly because of the introduction of
folk-tunes into church music that the latter presently began to show
evidences of the change. In all countries we can see how the folk-song,
increasing its hold over conscious composers, began to set the spirit
for all secular music.
[Illustration: Great Singers of the Past.
Top: Pauline Viardot-García and Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient
Bottom: Adelina Patti and Jenny Lind]
In Italy, where the change from the old style to the new was most
marked and dramatic, the art-song grew gradually out of the madrigal
and part-song. While we have no traces of the folk-song of the
sixteenth century, we know that composers began to write their
part-songs in the folk-spirit. This meant, besides the predominance
of the major mode and the tonic feeling, a stressing of the upper or
‘melody’ voice, whereas in the older contrapuntal music it was the
tenor which carried the chief tune. The _frottolle_ of the time were
ballads popular both in words and melody; the _villanelle_, or ‘village
songs,’ sought to preserve an artless and rustic flavor; and the
_villotte_, or drinking songs, were filled with the high spirits for
which the Italians are famous. All these were essentially folk-like
melodies treated contrapuntally. Gradually the counterpoint became
simpler, reflecting perhaps the growing simplification of church
music, and with Perissone Cambio, in 1547, the part-songs assumed
the nature of melodies harmonized in four parts with a free use of
passing notes--much as in the four-part chorales of J. S. Bach. The
simplification continued, and with Giacomo Gastoldi, in 1591, we have
true ‘chord-for-note’ harmonizations of melodies in the modern style.
With this, the song element has been liberated. The melody has gained
complete mastery, and the harmony is used simply to enrich and support
the upper part.
And as we have seen in another chapter[11] singers quickly seized the
import of the new developments. As early as 1539 Sileno is recorded
to have sung the upper part of a madrigal, with wind instruments for
the lower voices. Of course these madrigals were still essentially
polyphonic, but the composers of the time steadily continued to stress
the upper voice for its melodic value and to simplify and suppress the
inner voices until they became a mere harmonic support. It was this
‘one-voiced madrigal’ which became the parent of the _airs du cour_ and
the simple solo songs and romances of seventeenth century France.
But the abortive development of the art-song was an entirely different
matter. It had little or nothing to do with the tendency to stress a
madrigal melody, or with the liberation of the seventeenth-century
romance. The style called monody, or the _stile rappresentativo_,
which might have produced a true art-song in the seventeenth century,
was invented or revived quite in opposition to the madrigal and its
spirit. The one thing it had in common with the new madrigal was the
‘chord-for-note’ harmonic style. This, thanks to the popularity of
the new madrigal, had become common property. When the Florentine
innovators began their experiments, they found it ready to hand. But
the true monodic style was, so far as song is concerned, a wholly
abortive affair. Its history has been traced elsewhere.[12] We know of
the painful efforts toward monody for nearly two centuries previous
to the Florentine experiments; we know of the solo songs of Vincenzo
Galilei in the last decade of the sixteenth century, and of the songs
in Giulio Caccini’s _Nuovo Musiche_, published in 1600. We dimly feel
that a musical style devoted to the conscientious reproduction of
the spirit of the words, detail for detail, should have resulted in
a vigorous tradition of art-song. And yet we see the whole force of
monody veering into the opera, quickly being caught up in the _da capo_
aria form, and in an unbelievably short time forgetting all about its
early ideals of textual fidelity and serving only as an exposition
gallery for vocal virtuosity. Within a quarter of a century monody had
forsaken one ideal for its polar opposite. The true ‘representative
style’ had been left high and dry. It remained neglected and forgotten
until Beethoven wrote _An die ferne Geliebte_, or Schubert his
_Gretchen am Spinnenrad_.
Why was this? How could an art-form, which had caught the very essence
of the modern song, thus sell its birthright for a mess of pottage?
Reason enough. The mess of pottage was very attractive. For the
monodic experiments of the Florentines were the play-things of a set
of dilettantes. They were artificial and exotic. They had consciously
no use for the true musical tradition, the folk-song, which was living
and throbbing among the people. The body was there but the soul was
missing. The Florentines were chiefly interested in decorating the
lives of the aristocracy, in arranging court masques and private
theatricals. Aristocracy is always weak when it exists in opposition
to and at the expense of the life of the people, as it did in the
decadence of Renaissance Italy. The art which such an aristocracy
produces may be brilliant, but it is empty. It tinkles and it clatters,
but it does not resound. For the isolated aristocrat is not interested
in humanity, but in his own glorification. The joys and sorrows of the
people are repulsive to him: he seeks to escape sorrows, and he longs
for some more highly colored joys. He floats on the surface of life
as he floats on the surface of society. His art tends to become the
maximum of show and the minimum of meaning.
So when the aristocracy of the time discovered the new monodic style,
it sought to make use of it for theatrical entertainment, neglecting
the more human and personal song. Vocal coloratura provided aristocracy
with precisely the thing it had unconsciously been seeking--the maximum
of show and the minimum of meaning. The skilled singers of the time
caught the trick of introducing impromptu embellishments on the simple
monodic recitative. Monteverdi hit upon the device which would give
such coloratura singing a centre of gravity--the _da capo_ form. Monody
as heightened speech was wholly forgotten, except for the debased
_recitativo secco_, which bridged the gaps between arias, and tinsel
opera became the furore of the leisured class. The middle class of
Italy, becoming prosperous in business and always anxious to ape its
betters, flocked to these entertainments as soon as large opera houses
began to spring up, and opera as an institution overshadowed all other
musical forms. The oratorio, presumably devotional in spirit, became no
less debased in its display. Song, as a great art-form, was strangled
for another century or two, receiving no new ideals and serving as a
mere diversion for composer and singer. Thus does the easy convenience
of abstract form often stifle poetic expression.
We have spoken of the _da capo_ form and its unfortunate influence on
the monodic style. Strictly speaking, the term _da capo_ was not used
until Tenaglia used it in his opera _Cleano_, in 1661. But the ordinary
statement that the _da capo_ was invented by Tenaglia (or by Alessandro
Scarlatti, as is more frequently said) is quite misleading. Tenaglia’s
_da capo_ aria is of little historical importance. The composer used
the term probably not out of a sense of form, but out of pure laziness,
preferring not to copy out the opening section a second time. The
real _da capo_, which in its more developed state becomes the sonata
form, can be traced back vaguely into primitive music, and exists in
miniature perfection in many folk-songs. It becomes a recognized mold
for musical composition about the time of Monteverdi. With the later
opera and oratorio composers we find it in a debased state, where it
exists not as an artistic form but as a mere stenographic convenience.
This debasement is typical of the cheapening of opera which continued
pretty steadily up to the time of Gluck. The coloratura aria
obscured to all minds the expressive possibilities of the _stile
rappresentativo_, and left to song nothing but the old madrigal
tradition fused with certain elements of popular feeling. The many
arias, ariettas, _canzoni_, _cantate_, and even one-voiced madrigals,
which were published by the fashionable composers of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries showed little regard for dramatic or precise
emotional expression, but continued to sing with the placid lyrical
feeling of the great madrigal age. They were only obliged, with the
growth of solo singing, to become clearer as to form, more regular in
metre and line. For their ability to achieve this they had the popular
song almost wholly to thank. Scarlatti’s beautiful _canzonetta_, _O
cessate di piagarmi_, with its simple guitar accompaniment, might pass
for a Neapolitan folk-song of to-day. Yet, on the whole, the solo songs
of this period failed to fulfill the high artistic promise of the early
seventeenth century.
There was a great quantity of these lyrical pieces, however, and
they gained a high popularity. For the most part they remain to-day
in their original state, published with the curious notation and the
archaic clefs of the time, unknown except to the savants. But certain
anthologies have presented a few of the songs to the general public,
and these have astonished hearers with their strange placid beauty.
In some ways it is the best genius of the time which we find in these
songs. In them the lyric impulse of the Italians came out in its purest
form. The flashy ideals of the opera house were far removed from their
tender strains. Their beauty is like the sunlight of an early spring
morning, which illumines all things and exaggerates none. The words,
though naïve and somewhat conventional in their continual playing with
sentimental love, are not without their grace and beauty. And the music
is remarkably varied. Among these songs we find lullabies, fanciful
dialogues, dance songs, gentle laments, and delightful musical jokes.
There is among them much less of pure convention than in the operas of
the period, and at times there is a sensuous or emotional quality which
seems to look forward many decades. To the singer these songs are
especially valuable, since they represent at its purest the old Italian
ideal of _bel canto_, free from either declamatory or coloratura
influence. There can be no better school for the formation of purity of
tone and fluency of phrasing than these early _canzoni_.
Their general character, as contrasted with that of modern music, is
strikingly illustrated in Strauss’s opera _Der Rosenkavalier_. In the
first act of this work the court musician sings a few strophes of
a song which is supposed to be of the period of the opera, and the
composer has deftly imitated the music of the time. The song shows no
touch of emotional agitation or harshness. It has no climaxes, scarcely
any variations of tonal power. It is merely a lovely melody, sung
purely and smoothly, somewhat aimless in melodic formation, in long
fluent phrases and gentle melancholy cadences. To hear this _canzone_,
contrasted with the agitated modern music which surrounds it in the
opera, will demonstrate most eloquently the spiritual difference
between the music of the seventeenth and that of the twentieth century.
The song composers of this period are those whose names we meet in
the history of opera and oratorio, for it continued to be the part of
every popular composer in the larger forms to maintain and broaden his
reputation by means of small and popular pieces. Further, some of the
best of the songs are taken from the larger works. Not all the arias
were of the coloratura type. Often, especially in the seventeenth
century, charming _canzoni_ and ariosos found their way into a long
choral or stage work. The harmonic support (in many cases supplied by
the modern editors from the original figured bass) is at the beginning
simple and somewhat angular. But as the seventeenth century wears on
we find Monteverdi’s great discovery of the unprepared dissonance
working more freely into the texture of the accompaniment. The lower
voices of the accompaniment become more connected and song-like as the
_rappresentativo_ feeling gives way to the lyrical. And long before
the end of the century the simpler vocal numbers begin to look very
much like those of the early Handel operas. With Alessandro Scarlatti,
working at the end of the century, the change from the madrigal
style of Palestrina’s time is complete. In place of pure, motionless
triads and solid, block-like architecture, we have the movement and
flow of song in all the parts. Music becomes sharply differentiated
in character by the nature of the emotion or feeling it is intended
to express. What we miss, judging by modern standards, is a definite
rise and fall of the feeling. The phrases seem too long, too little
differentiated. There is no definite climax-point in the whole. There
is too much linked sweetness. But this is precisely the virtue of the
songs. They are the canonization of _bel canto_. They seek before all
else perfect purity of tone and style.
From the Monteverdi operas, much talked-of but little known, we should
mention the famous arioso from _Arianna_, the so-called ‘Ariadne’s
Lament.’ In all the Italian music of the time no more poignant
emotional utterance can be found. In its freedom and directness,
it seems to be a foreshadowing of the opera of the late nineteenth
century. But as the line of opera composers continues the pure _bel
canto_ ideal gains the upper hand. This we find represented in the
one-voiced madrigals of Monteverdi’s contemporaries, as, for example,
in the charming _Amarilli_ of Caccini. Cavalli, who continued the
operatic tradition of Monteverdi and gave greater freedom to the
aria, gives us a type of song which contains many elements of the
popular. Carissimi, first writer of oratorios and founder of the
great Italian coloratura tradition, writes more brilliantly. One of
the best known songs of the time is his _Vittoria_,[13] which has
an irresistible verve and energy. Marco Antonio Cesti, follower and
disciple of Carissimi, was by nature more of a lyricist. His style is
wonderfully suave and melodious, often appealing in a striking way to
the sentiments and the senses. Though he was primarily a religious
composer, his many madrigals and secular ariettas bring to us the sunny
sensuousness of the south. Many more of the popular composers of the
time are all but unknown to us.
Antonio Caldara (1671-1763), a _maestro di capella_ in Mantua and
Vienna, wrote secular songs, of which one, _Come raggio di sol_,[14]
has preserved his fame. This, with its fine sostenuto melody over
a throbbing accompaniment of repeated chords, carries eloquently a
delicate rise and fall of feeling which seems to be of the age of
Schubert. A certain G. B. Fasolo, whose dates are not even known, has
left us a charming song of sentiment, _Cangia, cangia tue voglie_,
which in its delicacy of workmanship suggests the French songs of the
eighteenth century. Giovanni Battista Bassani (1657-1716), _maestro
di cappella_ at Bologna and Ferrara, left a number of love-songs
of exquisite grace and tenderness, of which the lullaby, _Posate,
dormite_, will serve as an example. Other song-writers, most of them
more or less known for their work in the larger forms, were Antonio
Vivaldi, Alessandro Stradella, Francesco P. Sacrati, Paolo Magni,
Jacopo Perti, Antonio Lotti, Niccola Jomelli, Domenico Sarri, Raffaello
Rontani, Benedetto Marcello, Pier Domenico Paradies, Francesco
Gasparini, Andrea Falconiere, Francesco Durante, G. B. Bononcini,
Arcangelo del Leuto, and S. de Luca. Some of these men are no more than
names in musical history, who are known at all only because some dusty
manuscript preserved their fame. For some the primary biographical
facts are missing.
Others, of course, were men of wide influence, who have made a place
for themselves in musical history. But the excellence of the work of
the obscure men reveals to us how widespread was the art of musical
composition at the time, how excellent the tradition that was rooted in
the whole nation.
Easily the greatest song-writer of the period was the distinguished
opera composer, Alessandro Scarlatti. He was a notable innovator in
many forms, and this power of origination is shown in the poetic
variety he has given to his songs. We have already mentioned his
folk-like song, _O cessate di piagarmi_, which combines with the grace
of the dance the sweetness which invites to tears. In a quite different
vein nothing could be finer than _Su, venite a consiglio_, in which the
author holds a dialogue with his Fancies--a smoothly-moving allegro of
the utmost delicacy. Scarlatti’s emotional style is represented in the
arietta, _Sento nel core_, and as a pupil of the worldly Carissimi he
can, of course, show numberless arias in the brilliant bravura style
which was so popular at the time.
Pergolesi, the brilliant composer of _opera buffa_, whose early death
robbed music of one of its most promising votaries, is known to singers
everywhere by his song _Tre giorni_. The purest Italian lyricism also
flows in his andantino song, _Se tu m’ami, se sospiri_. Coming down to
a later date we find the extremely popular song-writer and composer of
_opera buffa_, Giovanni Paesiello (1741-1816), whose arietta, _Caro mio
ben_, is one of the purest examples of _cantilena_ in all music. We
may also notice the delicate gypsy song, _Chi vuol la Zingarella_. In
Paesiello we find all the traditional Italian virtues in the highest
degree--simplicity, grace, expressiveness--together with a sympathetic
understanding of the voice which has rarely been surpassed in Italian
song-writing.
II
One thing, however, the ‘representative style’ had contributed to song,
in common with all other forms of seventeenth century music. This was
the unprepared dissonance in harmonic writing. The dissonance, which
gave immensely greater freedom to the leading of voices, provided
especially a means of poignant emotional expression, wholly lacking
in the old church music. And such art-songs as were written in the
seventeenth century made a limited use of the dissonance, particularly
the dominant seventh, which enabled it to keep mildly abreast of
musical progress.
In Germany, in the early part of this century, Hans Leo Hassler
(1564-1612) was the chief exponent of song. Hassler had studied in
Italy and brought back to his native land something of the Latin
lightness of touch, as well as the technical innovations which he had
seen in process of development during his student days. At his hands
the heavy and earnest German folk-song became lighter and the melody
more prominent, especially in his dance songs. About this time many
song collections made their appearance, testifying to the growing
popularity of solo song. But it was Heinrich Albert (1604-1651) who
gave the true national touch to German song and justified the title
which later generations have given him, ‘Father of the German Lied.’
Germany, in the early part of the seventeenth century, was suffering
from the effects of severe religious wars and was in one of its
periodic states of national and cultural depression. Placed as it was
in the centre of enemies, disrupted in political adherence and torn by
fratricidal quarrels, it was peculiarly liable to lose its indigenous
culture and to adopt its manners and art from surrounding nations. This
was its estate in the first half of the seventeenth century, when the
‘poet patriots’ sought to revive national spirit in poetry. The group
had much in common with that of more than a century later[15] which
sought the same renaissance of German national life, but the time was
not yet ripe for their full success. Germany was disrupted spiritually
as well as politically and for still another century French letters and
art dominated the upper classes. But beneath the superficial culture of
the aristocracy there was the true national life of the common people,
the force which has kept Germany one through darkest days and nights
and has in the last fifty years brought to fruition such a glorious era
of national culture. And it was to the folk-element in German culture
that the ‘poet patriots’ were forced to appeal. Heinrich Albert, in
setting to music the poems of this group, chose the German folk-song
style, rather than that of the Italian aria. By this choice he made
his work count for something in history. He may be called (at least so
far as Germany is concerned) the creator of the _volkstümliches Lied_.
This is the song which we meet with continually in the next century
and a half--the song which is composed consciously and with a definite
artistic effect in mind, but with the materials which are common to
the people and capable of being understood by all. The ‘folk-like’
song, in fact, becomes a goodly share of the folk-song treasury of the
succeeding generation. At its best it is little below true folk-song
in quality. Often it fills a whole gap in the life of the people which
true folk-song had neglected to fill. We may get a very fair estimate
of the place of Heinrich Albert’s _volkstümliches Lied_ in the life of
the people if we recall the work of Stephen Foster in America,--a work
which is now the common property of people from one end of the land to
the other.
But, as we have said, German national life was not vigorous in the
seventeenth century, and the work of the ‘poet patriots’ passed into
comparative oblivion. Italian opera quickly became established in all
the court centres of Germany, and its ideals, nurtured especially by
Reinhard Keiser in Hamburg, dominated the conscious musical life of the
nation. French refinement entered in, to the detriment of indigenous
art. The songs of the time, written by J. G. Graun (1698-1771), G. P.
Telemann (1681-1767), Agricola, and others, were called odes and arias,
imitating the French and Italian names as they imitated the French
and Italian forms, and the _volkstümliches Lied_ as well as the true
art-song was again in disrepute. We should mention, however, the few
secular songs of J. S. Bach, which reveal, in spite of their lack of
originality in form, a delicate poetic sense, especially in the little
love-song, _Bist du bei mir_. For the true art-song Germany had to wait
until it had achieved some amalgamation of the social and cultural life
of the nation.
Much the most grateful song literature of the long transition period
is to be found in France. There, Gallic taste restrained opera from
the worst excesses of the Italian school, while the French sense of
grace and proportion produced a multitude of trifles which have by
no means lost their charm to this day. Moreover, as the eighteenth
century wore to a close there arose a wonderful tradition of patriotic
and idealistic songs which outshone the similar songs of Germany in
brilliance if not, on the whole, in stark emotional power.
At the end of the sixteenth century the folk-songs of France, like
those of England, were still largely in the modal scales. But this was
not in imitation of ecclesiastical music. Folk-songs have borrowed very
little from church music, in any age, while the debt on the other side
is enormous. The modal character of the early folk-songs is proper to
them and extends back far into the early morning of music. If church
and folk-music were similar in their scales, it is rather because they
arose from a common stock. Certainly the songs of early France were
thoroughly of their own and not of any borrowed character. But the
universal trend toward a standard major scale and a tonic centre was
felt in France as in other countries, and by the end of the sixteenth
century was well developed. The folk-tunes of the time were vigorous in
the extreme, probably as little like the dainty and restrained songs of
modern France as the stolid songs of nineteenth century England were
like the Elizabethan songs, with their abounding energy. The Lutheran
movement in music, which adapted folk-tunes as settings to devotional
hymns, found an exact parallel in France as early as 1539, when Marot
translated the psalms into metrical form in the vulgar tongue and set
them to the songs of the street. The settings instantly became popular.
It is said that the court, being fascinated with the freshness of the
songs, became thereby more familiar with scripture than it had been
for many a year. The strict church party violently disapproved of
the practice and issued its own set of rival songs to stem the tide
of popularity, but even these, which were obliged to be popular in
character, only added to the vogue of the street-tune settings. In the
following century the same thing happened in the political field. The
Cardinal Mazarin, who was immensely unpopular among the people, was
made the butt of endless satires in verse set to tunes which everybody
knew. No fewer than four thousand of these ‘Mazarinades’ were later
collected and published.
The songs of the late sixteenth century, apart from folk-songs,
were largely dance tunes set to lively words and supported with a
polyphonic accompaniment. But slowly the polyphony became more simple
and in the beginning of the seventeenth century the ‘chord-fornote’
accompaniment was adopted from Italy and came to most charming flower.
With the French sense of grace and fitness the French composers made
their _airs du cour_, or ‘court tunes,’ lyric and flowing, keeping
the accompaniment in its proper place as a mere support to the melody
and rounding off the pieces by means of a subtle and satisfying
architecture. The many names under which the French aristocratic songs
went are hardly to be distinguished with definiteness. The term _airs
du cour_ covered almost any songs of a restrained, polished character.
The _chanson_ was nearer the people, sometimes a ballad, very often a
dance tune, and not infrequently a gross or indecent piece of little
artistic value. The _romance_, which dates from the Troubadours, was
touching and graceful, almost wholly confined to the tender sentiments.
The _brunette_ was a simple love song, not very distinct in genre, the
very name being a matter of doubt. The _bergerette_, in which class
belong some of the most delightful of French songs, was a lyric of
pretended pastoral nature, in which lovers carried on their romances in
the guise of shepherds and shepherdesses. The _musette_ was written in
supposed imitation of a street organ, invariably over a ‘drone bass,’
usually in fifths. The _vaudeville_, less distinguished in character
than any of the others, was a mere adaptation of current street tunes
(whence the name, _voix de ville_). These types of song found their way
in great abundance into later French opera, especially that admirable
achievement of the French, the _opéra comique_, and many of the best
French songs of the eighteenth century are to be found in opera scores.
But in the operas of Lully, the chief French dramatic composer of the
seventeenth century, the lightness of touch which distinguishes the
French had not yet come into its own and the somewhat ponderous classic
tradition still dominated. Songs during this period were usually
written independently, but they grew in popularity so steadily that
the composers of light opera in the following century were forced to
include one or more _romances_, _brunettes_, or _bergerettes_ in their
works to insure their popularity.
III
In Elizabethan England in the sixteenth century the strolling
minstrels and ballad singers had already largely adopted the Ionian
or major mode for their songs. This mode was in high disfavor
among the educated musicians of the time, who called it _il modo
lascivio_, the ‘lascivious mode.’ It is interesting to recall that
the Greeks, including Plato, brought the same charge against their
Lydian mode, which was the one of the four original modes which was
most predominantly major in its feeling. In the England of Elizabeth
and James the madrigal had nearly as much vogue as in Italy and the
madrigal writers, chief among whom was Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625),
were highly regarded. Not a few of the solo songs from this period
have continued in favor to this day, but the more familiar ones were
in most cases the work of educated composers writing in the popular
style. In fact, the pure English folk-song was so inhospitably received
among its own folk during the Commonwealth and after, that, until
recently, it was popularly supposed that England had no folk-song of
consequence. But the folk-songs were there and have continued from
generation to generation through the centuries, to be discovered of
late years by conscientious investigators. Though they are dying out
in modern industrial England, they still exist in such numbers and of
such distinctive beauty that they prove, more than all records can, the
genuine musical quality of the England that existed before the great
Rebellion. From among the ‘folk-like’ songs of this period we have,
preserved in full popularity, a number, notably the ‘Carman’s Whistle,’
‘The British Grenadiers,’ ‘The Bailiff’s Daughter of Islington,’ the
‘Willow’ song which Shakespeare introduced into ‘Othello,’ and ‘The
Friar of Orders Gray.’
During the Commonwealth secular music flourished, but chiefly on the
Royalist side, since the Puritans, in their idle moments, were largely
engaged in singing hymn tunes. From this period we have the stirring
song ‘When the King Enjoys His Own Again.’ With the return of the
Stuarts and the reign of Charles II the influence of France, where
Charles had spent his years of exile, became dominant. The dance, not
the dance of the people but the stately dance of the court, asserted
its sway over song, and the flesh and blood, which had throbbed so
richly in Elizabethan England, all but dropped out of the later English
product. The songs which are preserved from the period occurred
chiefly in the masques which were performed at court, which were
French to the core. The chief song writer of the time, and of that
just preceding, was Henry Lawes (1595-1662), who wrote the music to
Milton’s immortal masque of ‘Comus.’ Lawes was a true musician, though
not a great one, and he did much for English song in making the music
respect the poetry. He loosened formal bonds and introduced something
of the Italian recitative style. Along with the Restoration we have
semi-folk-songs of a light character, though without the freshness
of preceding decades. We may mention two of the most popular, ‘Come,
Lasses and Lads,’ and ‘Barbara Allen.’ Pelham Humphrey (1647-74), whom
Charles II sent to France to study under Lully, brought back to England
with him the French grace and refinement and helped to set the keynote
for English song for the next half century. This much the returned
Stuart dynasty did for English music, in bringing French traditions
across the Channel, but the more stolid English disposition of the
time never hospitably absorbed the new influence. And in 1688 the
Stuarts were ushered out to the strains of a most remarkable tune,
‘Lilliburlero.’ Of this song it has truly been said that it ‘drove
King James II out of England.’ It was not a patriotic or warlike song,
however, but merely a satire. The ribald words may seem the worst of
doggerel to us now, but their rough satire awakened all England when
the impudence of the Stuarts had become unbearable and the energetic
melody carried them in a flash from one end of the country to the
other. The upheaval of 1688 was the ‘bloodless revolution.’ King James
succumbed to laughter.
And, curiously enough, this loose and somewhat commonplace tune
introduces us to the greatest and most sincere of all English musicians
(unless recent years have produced his peer) and to the song writer of
whom, above all others, England has a right to be proud. This man was
Henry Purcell. The tune of ‘Lilliburlero’ was written as an innocent
dance in a book of virginal pieces and thence was brought into the open
air to support the high spirits of the satiric verses. It is quite
certain that Purcell never intended himself to be made immortal when he
wrote it, or to be an instrument in the downfall of King James, to whom
he wrote one of his many ‘odes.’ But into some of his other songs he
put the best he had. They are graceful in the extreme, often decorated
with the vocal turns and embellishments which were the fashion of
the day, but never lacking in the musician’s touch. Their melodic
facility is charming; their appropriateness to the spirit of the words
is convincing; and their delicate architecture makes them, apart from
their vocal quality, polished works of art. Purcell still frequently
(and justly) appears on song programs. Among his many lyrics which are
worth knowing we may mention ‘Full Fathom Five’ and ‘Come Unto These
Yellow Sands,’ to Shakespeare’s words, and ‘I Attempt from Love’s
Sickness to Fly.’
But after Purcell English music showed a falling off in originality
and spontaneous quality which has astonished and mystified historians.
And English song suffered the same fate along with the rest of English
music. Vigorous semi-folk-songs date from the early eighteenth
century--notably ‘Down Among the Dead Men,’ ‘The Vicar of Bray,’
and ‘Pretty Polly Oliver’--but as the century progressed the song
output became more and more vapid and superficial in spirit. This
was doubtless in part due to the vogue of Italian opera which held
fashionable England fascinated and smothered the creative work of
native composers. And as people became disgusted with the fad they
turned to the next best thing at hand, the ‘ballad opera.’ This was
not a very exalted form of art, but it was at least fresher and more
musical than the exaggerated vocal virtuosity of opera, with its
conventionalized arias and its ‘castrati,’ or male sopranos. The
ballad opera came into fashion in 1727, with the enormous success of
‘The Beggar’s Opera,’ a success comparable to that of ‘Pinafore’ a
century and a half later. The ballad opera was strictly not opera at
all, but only a lively and merry farce (often suggesting the operetta
librettos of Sir William Gilbert) interspersed with songs and duets.
These songs were at first but popular melodies of the street or
countryside, adapted to new words, assuring the popularity of the
opera because the tunes were favorites. As the number of native tunes
seemed insufficient to supply the enormous number of ballad operas,
the writers engaged well-known musicians to write original tunes in
the same manner--sometimes as many as eight or ten composers for one
work. The songs never appeared as organic parts of the action and hence
offer no analogy to the arias of true opera, but they were usually
made vaguely appropriate to the dramatic situation and were introduced
in such a way as not to seem out of place. Among the host of these
melodies which have come down to us there are indeed many which are
fresh and attractive. But the great majority have the cheapness of the
street without its abundant life. And they nearly always have a strain
of the extreme sentimentality which has remained a blot on English
song literature until recent times. On the whole, if the ballad operas
delivered England from the pompous inanities of the Italian craze,
they also seduced English taste from the exquisite manner of Purcell.
The better part of musical England turned to the noble oratorios of
Handel and against his thundering chords all minor lyric strains were
fruitless.
The song writers of eighteenth-century England are a depressing crew.
Henry Carey (1685-1743), to whom the melody of ‘God Save the King’ has
been attributed, was a fruitful writer of ballad operas, though he
is nowadays best known by ‘Sally in Our Alley,’ a tune which is the
essence of awkwardness--a tune, in short, which could have happened
nowhere but in eighteenth-century England. Thomas Arne (1710-78) was
much more of a musician and a scholar, but also much of a pedant. Even
such a dainty song as ‘Where the Bee Sucks’ is marred by its awkward
overlaying of _fiorituri_. The song by which Arne is best known, ‘Rule
Britannia,’ is indeed a stirring melody; but the fact that a man of
Arne’s standing could write such a tune to the given words and that
England could accept the two as belonging together proves to what a
depth the country had sunk in musical matters. We need only quote the
first line:
[Illustration: Music score]
When Britain first at Heav’n’s command
Wagner said that this phrase contained the whole spirit of the English
people. But what about the words and that ridiculous ‘fir-r-r-r-rst?’
Samuel Arnold (1740-1802), Charles Dibdin (1745-1814), James Hook
(1746-1827), and John Davy (1764-1824) need only be mentioned and
forgotten. Henry Bishop (1788-1855) was a man of more artistic sense
and a composer of graceful and emotional melody, but without his
operas he would scarcely be remembered. The tradition of awkward and
sentimental melody which these men established or maintained continued
to disgrace English song until the close of the nineteenth century and
even to-day in the half-conscious English popular ballad we seem to
hear the debased strains of the ballad opera.
IV
During all this period song, as we have tried to show, was under
a cloud. It was the aria, illegitimate child of the _stile
rappresentativo_ and dearest daughter of sunny Italy, that held
sway over the nations. Vocal music was commonly thought in terms of
the aria. All else was little better than a diversion for an idle
moment--understood, of course, that we are speaking of polite culture.
What aria meant to the seventeenth and especially to the early
eighteenth century was chiefly vocal display of one sort or another.
But formally we may distinguish it by the _da capo_ form. _Da capo_,
meaning ‘from the beginning,’ was the open sesame into the mazes
of vocalization. Monteverdi must get the credit for it. He lit the
fire. Numerous rubbish piled on by other hands furnished the smoke.
For Monteverdi was, above and beyond the innovator in him, a skilled
and sensitive musician. He felt, and felt truly, that the _stile
rappresentativo_ made his beloved music decidedly a second best. Very
well to reveal the emotional qualities of the text! But if the music
cannot itself hang together there is something wrong. And it was with
one of those very keen and very simple devices that Monteverdi righted
matters. ‘Represent’ your text to your heart’s content, he said, but
before you have done go back and sing a little of the beginning over
again. Thus you give the musician a chance; for you mark off the
music as something having its own architecture. And, moreover, you
‘represent’ all the more truly, for you mark off at the same time
the lyrical emotion and make a musical unit of what is properly also
a unit of drama. This Monteverdi did in simplest terms in the first
of arias--‘Ariadne’s Lament,’ in his opera _Arianna_, and this same
Lament, it is recorded, very properly moved the audience to tears.
The aria is beautiful still. Monteverdi’s dissonances have not lost
their emotional expressive value. And the _da capo_ repetition, which
enters so unobtrusively, underscores the emotion as nothing else could.
But Monteverdi was not the inventor of this form. Needless to say the
folk-song had been there before him. And, as always happens, when the
art of the people had been commandeered for a single well-chosen one of
its treasures, it gave gold where silver had been asked.
Nevertheless gold can be put to base uses. Scarcely had dilettantes
discovered that the _da capo_ form could be used to give unity to some
vocalist’s singing than they used it to give form to all sorts of
formless things. We cannot at this distance imagine the vapidity of
endless runs and roulades which passed in the seventeenth century for
vocal music. Or at least we cannot until we see the actual fact on a
cold printed page. And then, to do the seventeenth century justice,
we cannot imagine the brilliancy of these same runs and roulades when
brilliantly sung with the incomparable Italian vocal art of the time.
Brilliancy of a kind! Let us call it brilliancy merely, and not plague
it with the name of music. However that may be, we certainly cannot
imagine the hold this institution of the aria had over the imaginations
of the people of the time. To them it must have seemed the Muses on
wings as compared with the Muses on foot. Aria became a science. More,
it became a code of honor. Its nuances and conventions were tabulated
as nicely as those of fencing or love making. A sin against the code
was the unforgivable sin. There were, scientifically accredited,
certain classes of arias with certain subdivisions thereunto
appertaining. An opera must contain so many of each sort. Each major
singer must have so many, no two alike and all equitably distributed.
No aria must fall in the same class as that just preceding. There were
many rules such as these, and more of the same sort which are well
buried in dusty dictionaries. And if there were any to protest against
such a condition they were promptly silenced by the statement that the
arrangement was excellent for the singers.
Those who studied this deep subject most profoundly at the time agreed
that the aria was to be divided into some five classes, to wit: _aria
bravura_--brilliant, rapid, difficult; _aria cantabile_--smooth,
long drawn out, designed to exhibit purity of tone and manipulation
of the breath; _aria buffa_--humorous; _aria di portamento_--simple
in outline, playing with the singer’s trick of swelling out on
long-sustained tones; and _aria parlante_--simulating rapid spoken
speech, a type peculiarly grateful to the Italian language. These
classes had their subdivisions, as, for instance, the _aria parlante_,
which might be _agitata_, or _infuriata_, or _fugata_, or what not. The
lore of aria was endless. Except that the form continued into Italian
opera of the middle nineteenth century it would scarcely be worth
recalling. But the greatest of the arias (with considerable musical
value added) are among the latest. The ‘Factotum’ aria which opens
Rossini’s ‘Barber of Seville’ is a perfect example of the _buffa_
and might also come under the head of the _parlante_; and Leonora’s
first aria in _Il Trovatore_ is in the true manner of the _bravura_.
In addition to the arias proper we should mention the _cavatina_ and
the _arioso_; the former a short aria, rather more musical and graceful
than was considered necessary in the longer forms; and the latter a
brief lyrical strain, free as to form, planned truly to express an
emotion in its momentary passing. All these forms have little more
than an archeological interest to us now (though the _da capo_ idea
remains one of the most fruitful in all music), except for the purposes
of vocal study. But this exception is considerable. The arias were
designed to exhibit the utmost of vocal virtuosity. They serve to-day
to develop and exercise the same, so far as modern music and musical
taste demand it, for the rather more artistic purposes of the twentieth
century.
V
The ‘odes’ and ‘arias,’ which in early eighteenth-century Germany
stood in the place of songs, began to give place toward the middle of
the century to music of a more national character. The work of Johann
Sebastian Bach, though not widely recognized at the time, spoke for a
solid tradition of native German singing. And the wars of Frederick the
Great, who reigned from 1740 to 1786, did much to arouse patriotism
in outward life. Any vigorous cultural life in Germany during these
wearing conflicts was, of course, impossible, but after the close of
the Seven Years’ War (1756-63) Prussia and Saxony began to revive,
and with them revived a consciousness of German nationality and
German identity. The courts were, of course, thoroughly Parisian, but
the middle class was more than ever national in feeling. And among
this class in the last third of the century arose a type of dramatic
entertainment which corresponded to the _opéra comique_ in France and
was quite as national--the _Singspiel_. The founder of this type was
Johann Adam Hiller (1728-1804), first director of the famous Leipzig
Gewandhaus orchestra and one of the most noted musicians of his day.
The _Singspiel_ was not greatly unlike the English ballad opera in
form, though much more sincere in spirit. It was a simple play,
usually light in character, with frequent interspersing of songs and
choruses. The plot was usually drawn from German village life and the
characters were all familiar types. These were, on the whole, so truly
observed that the _Singspiel_ became a truly national art. Moreover,
its artistic value was often high; the songs and choruses were usually
organic parts of the action, and the best musicianship frequently went
into their composition. The _Singspiel_ was the direct parent of German
opera, as has been narrated in another place.[16] But its value to the
art of song was even more important. For, while in the _Singspiel_
the nobles and aristocratic characters sang arias modelled on the
French style, the peasants and middle class people sang true songs
in the spirit of folk-music. Accordingly the _Singspiel_, with its
immense popularity, spread abroad the knowledge and love of the German
_volkstümliches Lied_. It was for more than a quarter of a century the
direct continuer of the tradition of German song.
But Hiller’s place in the history of song is even more distinctive than
this. For he is generally conceded to have been the first composer of
the _durchkomponiertes Lied_. _Durchkomponiert_, which literally means
‘composed all the way through,’ is used to describe that type of song
which does not follow any abstract formal scheme but fits the words
in all their variations of meaning, leaving each song to find its own
form according to its own requirements. Thus the aria form which
would require the repetition of the first section at the close of the
song would be wholly unsuitable for a poem which showed an emotional
development from joy to sorrow, or from sorrow to joy. In the same way
the strophic form, which sets each verse of the poem to the same tune,
would be unsuitable for a poem expressing contrasting emotions in its
verses. A true regard for the spirit of the words required that the
song composer should be free to write expressive music according to the
requirements of each line of the poem. This was first done, tentatively
enough, it is true, by Hiller. From that time on German song writers
showed a certain amount of freedom in their song forms. It must be
admitted that they did not make much use of their freedom, since they
did the greater part and the best part of their work in the strophic
form. But Hiller has the credit of originating a type of procedure
which was further developed by Beethoven and brought to glorious
fruition by Schubert.
Gluck, with his unfailing artistic sense, has supplied a bit of the
literature of song development in his letter, written in 1777 to La
Harpe, accompanying his settings of some of Klopstock’s poems, in
which he said that ‘the union between air and words should be so
close that the poem should seem made for the music no less than the
music for the poem.’ Unfortunately, however, these ‘odes,’ the only
true songs Gluck wrote, are dry and pedantic. Joseph Haydn, though he
contributed nothing to the development of the art-song, has left a
few lyric settings that are known and loved to-day. His earlier sets
of songs (one group of twelve in 1781 and another in 1784) were so
popular in England that he was besieged by the publishers with requests
to write more. The result was the twelve famous ‘canzonets,’ of which
the best known are the ‘Mermaid’s Song’ and ‘My Mother Bids Me Bind My
Hair.’[17] The latter, though still undimmed in musical beauty, is
by no means a step in a forward direction. It is written in true aria
style and the melody, while appropriate to the spirit of the words, is
almost instrumental rather than vocal. The song might, in fact, have
served as the allegretto to a symphony.
The other supreme German composer of the time, however, saw to the
heart of the _durchkomponiertes Lied_ and produced at least one song
that wholly anticipated Schubert. Mozart published in all thirty-four
songs that can justly be distinguished from arias. Most of them, like
‘The Song of Freedom,’ are little different from the ordinary strophic
songs of the day. But Mozart’s setting of Goethe’s poem, ‘The Violet,’
is a miniature masterpiece of the art-song.[18] Retaining the delicate
sense of architecture which Mozart’s work never lost, it still follows
the import of the words with faithful accuracy. The violet loved a
maiden who came daily to walk in the meadow. It hoped that she would
notice it. She never did. But one day she stepped on it and crushed it.
And the violet was happy to meet its death through its loved one. The
short, gasping phrases on the words _es sank, es starb_ (‘it sank, it
died’) are imitated in the accompaniment so suggestively that one might
almost call it realism. On the words, ‘_und sterb ich denn_’ (‘and
though I die’) the music becomes quicker with the growing emotion of
the dying flower. _So sterb ich doch durch sie!_ continues the flower
in ecstasy, and on the beloved word, _sie_, the voice attains its
highest note and its emotional climax.
VI
The last half of the eighteenth century in France gave the world some
of the loveliest songs of the age. The types continued for a time
to be those mentioned above, but the gain in grace and fluency
over the preceding century was enormous. _Opéra comique_ was filled
with _romances_ and _brunettes_ and _bergerettes_. Not a few songs,
also, were composed independently. Among the latter class we should
mention those of Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-78), literary adventurer
and musical dilettante, who entwined himself so strangely into the
whole cultural life of France. Rousseau never had an adequate musical
education. He had served as tutor in music in Switzerland and did not
improve himself much with his desultory self-education after he came to
Paris. But he was a true journalist, and no inadequacy of preparation
could daunt him. He had that rare journalistic gift of knowing what
people wanted ten years before they themselves knew it. His _opéra
comique_, _Le devin du village_ (1752), still occasionally played, was
the lightest of theatrical entertainments, but continued in unabating
popularity for sixty years. Its success played no small part in setting
or maintaining the tone of _opéra comique_ for the next half century.
Its songs were chiefly the romances which were popular in Paris; they
showed, perhaps, no great creative ability, but were extraordinary,
like all Rousseau’s work, in catching a certain popular quality which
escapes analysis. The composer’s activity as essayist and novelist,
which places him as one of the greatest social forces of modern times,
prevented his ever doing much work in music and the world is perhaps
not much the loser. But in his musical activity he was at least
important as a fashion-follower and a fashion-setter. In 1781, after
his death, there were published the hundred romances and duets which
he called _Les Consolations des misères de ma vie_, containing some of
his most typical melodies. Among them is the famous romance on three
notes--_Que le jour_--which does not, indeed, escape a sense of melodic
poverty from its limited compass, but reveals a delicate grace which
makes it worth remembering apart from its interest as an experiment.
[Illustration: Mozart’s Manuscript of the first page of his setting of
Goethe’s ‘_Das Veilchen_’]
But far greater than Rousseau in actual musical value are, of course,
the great French writers of _opéra comique_, Monsigny (1729-1817),
Philidor (1726-95), Dalayrac (1753-1809), and Grétry (1741-1813).
In technical learning these men, especially Grétry, were all
deficient. But in a certain subtle melodic grace their _romances_
and _bergerettes_ have never been surpassed the world over. At first
singing they may seem trivial or meaningless or dry. They always lack
that rich strain of human genuineness which characterizes the German
Lied. Without doubt they are artificial, not spontaneous in the more
human meaning of the word. But if they are artificial it is in the
best sense. They represent the most delicate conscious artistry, the
nicest adjustment of the means to the end, the more expertly for being
achieved with the simplest materials. The singer needs a quite special
faculty to understand them. The joy of them is that of perfection in
limited space, of work well done. The singer must have a complete
command over detail, must be conscious of the relations of each note he
is singing. The beauty of these songs is that of perfect good taste.
They do not obtrude themselves, they do not assume a higher value than
they possess, they do not seek undue praise. They are restrained as a
well-mannered hostess is restrained in talking of politics or religion
to her guests. It is not that she is insincere, only that she feels it
is not the time for unrestrained sincerity. Like a true gentleman of
the world, these songs hate the too obvious. Like a true aristocrat,
they refrain from laying bare their souls; they value themselves too
highly to exhibit their own virtues. They seek to be elegant and suave
and courteous. In short, they seek to be ‘good form.’
But a very different ideal from that of good form was about to burst
upon French national life. Rousseau’s highly colored writings had
carried with them the germs of the great Revolution. A few of the
best observers were able to see that conditions could not stay as
they were, that human emotions, long inarticulate, must soon spring
to violent expression. The lovely romance, _Plaisir d’amour_ (1785),
mingling with such an innocent military song as _Malbrouk’s s’en
va-t-en guerre_, could show no hint of the completely changed state of
the public emotions five years later. In 1789 the storm broke. Europe
realized that the people had entered the institution of government.
And soon, too, in their crude way, the people had begun to enter the
institution of French musical art. A certain fiddler-beggar, playing
daily for _sous_ on the _Pont Neuf_, one Ladré by name, picked up a
lively dance tune, heaven knows where, which he played daily on his
fiddle and presently published under the name, _Carillon national_. And
some one, even more obscure to history, set words to it, beginning with
the immortal phrase which Benjamin Franklin had repeated continually
in France in reference to the American Revolution--_Ça ira!_ (‘It
is coming!’). These words shall not here be called poetry. Yet they
had certain of the supreme virtues of poetry, namely, simplicity of
language and utter sincerity of statement. ‘_Ah, ça ira, ça ira, ça
ira!_’ sang the mob as it led its captives to their death. ‘_Les
aristocrats à la lanterne_’ (‘Hang the aristocrats!’). Such sentiments
were not exalted. Their statement was far from delicate. Similar
sentiments toward the peasants had many a time been expressed with
infinite grace and good taste in the court of Louis XVI. But when
the mob had achieved the ability to think ‘Hang the aristocrats’ and
to make a song of it and to sing that song aloud on the streets a
new force had entered into the life of men. And, what is more to our
purpose, a new force had entered into the art of song. Never before
had emotion been expressed so directly or so violently. The tune is
something like our ‘Dixie,’ though without its joyousness. It is
a fiddler’s tune, distinctly unsingable, especially since it was
ignorantly arranged so as to lie in places far above the compass of
the untrained voice. But its spirit was that of flowing blood and
clattering iron. To this day _Ça ira_ produces an effect of emotional
savageness which can hardly be duplicated in all song literature.
And Paris presently gained, from some unknown source, another tune,
almost equally effective and with words equally to the point. It was
the _Carmagnole_, with its grim refrain, _Vive le son du canon_ (‘Long
live the sound of the cannon’). This was sung daily in what is now
the beautiful _Place de la Concorde_, where, during the ‘Reign of
Terror,’ scores of aristocrats and political suspects were executed
daily. The mob liked to see the blood flow and, joining hands in a
great circle, would bellow this very singable tune and its sentiments
to the just Heavens. But this song was overshadowed in popularity by
another--the famous _Marseillaise_, which has been called, perhaps
justly, the greatest of all songs. Rouget de Lisle, a military engineer
and dilettante musician, wrote the poem and the melody one night in
Strassburg, early in 1792, for the troops to sing at the review the
next day. He called it _Chant de Guerre_. The song made its way to
Marseilles and was taken up by the body of Republican volunteers on
their forced march to Paris in July, 1792. It instantly spread in the
capital, being known as _le Chant des Marseillais_. The Marseillians,
with this song on their lips, were among the foremost in the storming
of the Tuileries a few days later, when the king finally became the
helpless prisoner of the people. Thenceforth it accompanied the
Republican armies on their victorious marches through Europe. It is
part of the irony of such things that de Lisle, who wrote the great
Republican song of the Revolution, was born a royalist and remained
one till his death. Patriotic songs, during the revolutionary period,
appeared in great abundance, but the great majority of them, as always
at such times, were vapid and artistically insignificant. From among
them, however, have remained two or three of exceptional quality.
One is Gossec’s ‘Hymn to the Supreme Being,’ designed as a religious
song which an anti-ecclesiastical government could use without
inconsistency, and Méhul’s noble _Chant du départ_, written to be sung
at the departure of the armies, and still so used. This song, which was
Napoleon’s favorite (he forbade the _Marseillaise_ as too violent),
represented the pure Republican element of the Revolution, as opposed
to the more violent communistic elements. In its elevation of style, in
its perfect fitness of words and music, it remains one of the greatest
patriotic hymns of the world.
VII
Leading up to and even post-dating Schubert’s time we find two names
which must enter into every history of song. The first is that of
Ludwig Spohr (1784-1859). Spohr presents a peculiar problem. One of the
most eminent musicians of his day and a man known before all else as an
innovator, he has come to be the merest dead wood of musical history,
a part of the gigantic tree, but a part which has become useless while
other parts are still flourishing. Spohr felt, as Beethoven felt, that
the old harmonic order had reached its zenith and that the time was
ripe for freer and more daring expression. He was constantly straining
to achieve this, but he lacked sufficient genius and his effort
remains--only straining. He was always searching for expressive nuance,
but his stock of tricks was limited and his emotional range slight.
His many songs have completely dropped out of sight. In them detail is
elaborated until one loses all sense of form and outline.
The other song writer who must be mentioned here is, of course,
Beethoven. Beethoven’s songs do not often find a place in song recitals
nowadays, but they are an organic link in the great German hierarchy
from Heinrich Albert to Schubert. In addition to three songs of finest
inherent quality we must credit him with the practical invention of the
song cycle and the cultivation of free form and expressive detail in a
way that clearly foreshadows Schubert. The three great songs mentioned
are: ‘The Glory of God,’[19] _In questa tomba_, and the _Busslied_. The
first is as noble a strain as anything in the great symphonies, a finer
product because a simpler one than Schubert’s _Die Allmacht_ in the
same spirit. The _Busslied_ has a long, half declamatory introduction
following the words with faithful accuracy, presently, as the lyric
element becomes more marked, settling into a measured song, over an
impressive bass which is instinct with religious dignity. The second,
_In questa tomba_, concentrates in a few lines of music the grim
seriousness of the words. _An die ferne Geliebte_ (‘To the Far-off
Loved One’) is a true cycle, as Schumann later understood the form. The
songs are connected by modulating intermezzos on the piano and the last
song is followed by a piano postlude which introduces the melody of the
first. The songs themselves are not of first quality, but the form and
intent of the cycle are yet another proof of Beethoven’s astonishingly
progressive genius. This cycle seems to look forward to Schumann
rather than to Schubert. It uses, in fact not a few of Schumann’s own
tricks--especially the deceptive cadence--to lend an ‘atmospheric’
quality to the music, or to prevent too great a finality in a musical
phrase which accompanies an unfinished thought. The piano part shows
a conscious effort to make the separate details expressive in their
own right. Beethoven, in this cycle, was emphatically writing in the
new and not in the old style. The singer should be familiar with this
remarkable group if he is to appreciate the later work of Schumann.
(The final song, _Nimm sie hin denn, diese Lieder_, is well worth
knowing for its own sake.) Though Beethoven is not one of the great
names in song literature, these pieces show eloquently that the great
symphonist touched no form that he did not enrich.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] Vol. I, Chapter IX (p. 258 ff).
[11] Chapter II (Sec. IV).
[12] Vol. I, Chapter IX.
[13] See Musical Examples (Vol. XIII).
[14] See Musical Examples (Vol. XIII).
[15] See Vol. II, Chapter VI.
[16] _Cf._ Vol. II, Chapter X.
[17] See Musical Examples (Vol. XIII).
[18] See Musical Examples (Vol. XIII).
[19] See Musical Examples (Vol. XIII).