Part 16

“=Orfeo=.”—In _Orfeo_, Gluck took the same stand which Peri had taken in his opera on the same myth a century and a half before: the _illustration of the drama through music_ which should give it a poignancy of expression denied to the spoken word. The later composer had the immense advantage of musical resources undreamed-of at the time of the Florentine opera, but both stand upon the same artistic platform. It was a daring task that Gluck had attempted. Orpheus, robbed by death of Euridice, seeks to regain her by forcing entrance to the place of departed spirits. On his descent to the nether world he is confronted by a band of demons who bar his way, but finally melted to tears by the pathos of his song, they allow him to pass. The composer must make this appeal adequate to the effect; anything less would result in an anti-climax totally disastrous to dramatic illusion. Gluck passed this test triumphantly. Even today this scene remains one of the most powerful known to the operatic stage. _Orfeo_, in its strength and simplicity, was so opposed to the taste of the day that its victory was by no means unquestioned, but it soon won universal recognition and with its successor, _Alceste_ (1767), is the oldest opera heard at the present day.

=Gluck in Paris=.—_Alceste_ was followed by _Paride ed Elena_ (Paris and Helen), but the severity of the new style aroused such a storm of hostile criticism that the discouraged composer turned to Paris with his _Iphigenie en Aulide_ (Iphigenia in Aulis) to a French text after Racine’s tragedy. Marie Antoinette, then the wife of the Dauphin, had been his pupil in Vienna, and through her influence the opera was produced, though not without arousing one of the most bitter wars in musical annals. Twelve years before, Italian _Opera Buffa_ had gained a footing in Paris. Its lightness, melodic grace, and witty dramatic situations captivated many who immediately attacked the prevailing type of French opera, of which Rameau was the head, as heavy and unmusical. This opinion was strenuously combated by others who upheld native art. Thus there were two strongly-opposed parties, one defending the Italian, the other the French school of opera. After Rameau’s death, the Italian party was in the ascendency, but on Gluck’s arrival with a French opera he was taken as the representative of the national school. Piccini, the most popular Italian composer of the day, was pitted against him, but it needed only the production of Gluck’s _Iphigenie en Tauride_ (Iphigenia in Tauris) to crush his rival’s claims. This was his last great work. He retired to Vienna, which was his home until his death.

=Influence of Gluck=.—The influence exerted by Gluck was far-reaching and permanent. The reform he initiated did not create a school—it did far more; it _profoundly affected all schools_. With no immediate followers among the composers of his time he stood alone, as he stands today, one of the most commanding figures in musical history. His _Orfeo_ marks the beginning of a new era by rescuing a great and important form of art from a decadence which had robbed it of legitimate power and effect. The opera more than any other form of music is dependent upon popular favor for existence. It is therefore peculiarly susceptible to influences which tend to lower artistic standards. Gluck, however, made it impossible that it should ever again sink to the level of the mass of crudities and puerilities from which he lifted it.

REFERENCE.

Oxford History of Music, Vol. IV.

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS.

Give an account of the introduction of opera into Germany.

Why did German composers develop slowly?

Describe the early German opera forms.

Who was the chief agent in a change?

Give an account of Handel’s work in connection with German opera.

What had been the influence of singers?

What were the influences to cause Gluck to set about opera reform?

Give an account of “Orfeo.”

Why did Gluck go to Paris and what success did he have there?

What was the influence of Gluck upon the future of the opera?

It will be noted that the Thirty Years’ War in Germany interfered with the development of the Opera. Frederick the Great’s grandfather and father laid the foundations of the Prussian kingdom. In France, Gluck’s works carry us up to the period of social and political agitation preceding the French Revolution. In England, the House of Hanover is becoming more firmly established on the throne; in America, the period is that of the struggles between the French and English colonists.

LESSON XXIII.

MOZART TO ROSSINI.

=The Opera after Gluck=.—After Gluck the first great name is that of =Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart= (1756-1791). Haydn had indeed written a number of operas, but they were, in the main, light in character and exercised no influence whatever on the development of the form. At the age of twelve, Mozart had composed two operas, but the first to receive public performance was _Mitridate, Re di Ponto_ (Mithridates, King of Pontus), which was produced at Milan two years later under his own direction. This was followed by others, but these early works do not call for any extended mention. Though they abound in melody and show a maturity remarkable in so young a composer, they were frankly written to please the taste of the time and do not in any essentials depart from the accepted Italian style then in favor, as fixed by Scarlatti and his contemporaries.

=Gluck and Mozart Compared=.—It was not until _Idomeneo, Re di Creta_ (Idomeneus, King of Crete) was brought out during the Carnival season of 1781, that he demonstrated fully the gifts which made him the first dramatic composer of his time. In this he shows a great advance over the conventional opera of the period and an approach to the ideals of Gluck, though neither in _Idomeneo_ nor in any of his later operas did he attempt to embody these ideals in the uncompromising form chosen by the older master. Though contemporaries, no two composers could well be more unlike in character, temperament and methods than Gluck and Mozart. The one, a man of years, ripened through travel and study, conditioned his music according to the requirements of the drama; the other, a youth of no great intellectual endowments aside from his art, but aflame with the fire of genius, felt the drama in terms of music. Thus they approached the task from opposite sides. Not that Gluck was without feeling or Mozart without intellect; it was simply a case of the dramatist and the musician solving the problem each in his own way. At the same time it was impossible that Gluck’s theories should be entirely without influence on Mozart. Even a genius must learn from his environment, and Gluck’s position, though sharply disputed by the Italian school to which Mozart belonged, could not be ignored by the younger man. Then, too, Mozart had been in Paris during the height of the Gluck-Piccini controversy, and it is known that he had made a close study of _Alceste_, to which Gluck, in the form of a dedication to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, had given a preface containing a clear exposition of his principles of dramatic composition. It is hard to say, however, what direction Mozart’s dramatic course might have taken had his life not been cut so pitilessly short and if his outward circumstances had been less constrained. He was obliged to adapt himself to Italian influences which at that time were all powerful.

=The Singspiel=.—As already mentioned, the first attempts at German opera took the form of the _Singspiel_, but it gradually died out during the invasion of Italian opera in Germany. Its revival and development to a higher standard was due to =Johann Adam Hiller= (1728-1804), who received his first impulse through an English ballad opera of a farcical nature, “The Devil to Pay.” This was translated into German and given (1743) at Berlin with the original English melodies taken from popular ballads. Hiller set this translation to music and followed it with many others which soon acquired great vogue; one or two, for example, _Der Dorfbarbier_ (The Village Barber), are still heard in Germany. Hiller, though one of the most learned musicians of the day, the founder of the celebrated Gewandhaus Concerts in Leipzig and editor of the first musical periodical ever published, adopted a simple, natural Folk-style in these operettas, as they were also called. Goethe was particularly interested in this revival of a national form of opera; it stimulated him to the writing of the ballads which in turn acted so powerfully in developing the German song under the hands of Loewe, Schubert, Schumann and others.

=Mozart’s First German Opera=.—Emperor Joseph II, wishing to establish the _Singspiel_ in Vienna, commissioned Mozart to write a German opera of a similar style. This resulted in _Die Entführung aus dem Serail_ (The Elopement from the Seraglio), and the composer’s hopes of founding a national school of opera were high. Unfortunately, he was doomed to disappointment. Though _Die Entführung_ was received with enthusiasm, popular favor was averse to opera in any other tongue than Italian; the German theatre was open only a few years and with the exception of _Die Zauberflöte_, his future operas were composed to Italian texts.

=His Later Operas=.—_Le Nozze di Figaro_ (The Marriage of Figaro—1786), _Don Giovanni_ (Don Juan—1788), _Die Zauberflöte_ (The Magic Flute—1791) rank as Mozart’s greatest operas. Considered as music alone, the last reaches a height which gives an idea of what he might have done in nationalizing the opera if he had been spared a score of years longer; but its confused, irrational plot stands in the way of its popularization. The same objection holds good of _Così fan Tutte_ (Women are All Alike—1790), which contains some of his most exquisite music.

=Characteristics of Mozart’s Operas=.—Mozart’s _conception_ of the opera is that of the _musician_, _not_ of the _dramatist_. This is plain from the indifferent texts he willingly accepted, yet so universal was his genius that he fused the two elements into a complete and consistent whole. Such a union of clearly-cut characterization and musical beauty is unknown in the opera. He made his _characters eternal types_ by means of music so apposite to their individuality that it seems in each case to spring from inward necessity, yet which as music has never been surpassed for intrinsic grace and charm. Italian melody in its best estate on a foundation of German depth and solidity is its distinguishing characteristic. This characterization is confined, however, to details and personages; of the development of the drama as a whole he apparently had but little idea. This, however, was not called for by the taste of the times; the opera was not considered from a dramatic standpoint, save by Gluck and the composers of the French school; the libretto furnished a series of situations suitable for musical illustration, not a consistent and logical dramatic action.

=Their Significance to German Art=.—Mozart marks the highest point reached by the opera of the 18th century; he also _marks the passing of Italian supremacy in Germany_. The Germans were already masters of the other great forms, the Oratorio and the Symphony; Gluck and Mozart captured the Opera also for Germany, though it was not for several decades after Mozart’s death that German opera rose from its discredited position at the close of the century.

=Beethoven’s Fidelio=.—A mighty impulse was given to the development of a national school by the production of _Fidelio_ (1805), Beethoven’s only opera. His two great predecessors had been obliged for the most part to write their operas to French and Italian texts. =Beethoven= (1770-1827), however, showed his independence and sturdy national character by choosing a subject totally alien to the frivolous intrigues which at that time ruled the Viennese stage—a story of heroic, wifely devotion—and composed it to German words and in the German style; that is, with dialogue instead of recitative. Essentially symphonic in character, _Fidelio_ shows the same disregard of vocal limitations which characterizes the Ninth Symphony and the Mass in D. Difficult for the singers, it was still more difficult for the public. In subject and treatment it was above their heads; they turned it the cold shoulder and it soon disappeared from the boards. An appreciation of its greatness was reserved for a later day.

=Italian Composers in France and Germany=.—The popularity of Italian opera outside of Italy led to the expatriation of many Italian composers who exercised a powerful influence in France and Germany. Among these =Antonio Salieri= (1750-1825) deserves mention for his career in Vienna, where he was the successful rival of Mozart in court favor and later the teacher of Beethoven. More important was =Luigi Cherubini= (1760-1842), who found his way to Paris just before the Revolution. A master of the severe contrapuntal school, which was then passing away, Beethoven considered him the first composer of the day for the stage and studied his works zealously. Cherubini was present at the first performance of _Fidelio_, which shows strong traces of the influence exerted upon Beethoven by _Les Deux Journées_ (The Two Days, known in Germany and England as The Water Carrier), Cherubini’s greatest opera. The two were on intimate terms during the stay of the latter in Vienna for the purpose of bringing out several of his operas. There was much in common between them; the Italian had the solidity, dignity and nobility of treatment generally associated with the German character. Beethoven’s choice of a subject for his opera was doubtless influenced by _Les Deux Journées_; the themes of both are much the same, involving devotion and self-sacrifice of the highest order.

=Spontini and Rossini=.—Another Italian composer who went first to France and afterward to Germany was =Gasparo Spontini= (1774-1851), who with _La Vestale_ (The Vestal) enlarged the sphere of the opera in Paris. Spectacular and pompous in character, sonorous and powerful in instrumentation, it pointed directly to the type of grand opera originated by Meyerbeer nearly a generation later. In 1820, he was summoned to Berlin, where he remained as court composer and conductor for twenty-two years, a period coincident with the most significant development of the German school of opera. Spontini was the last of the many Italians who had for a century and a half borne almost uninterrupted sway in Germany.

The most brilliant and gifted of all these wandering sons of Italy was =Gioacchino Rossini= (1792-1868). As rich in melody as Mozart, though of a less refined type, he owed more to nature than to study. His first successful opera, _Tancredi_ (1813), set all Italy agog with the freshness and vivacity of its airs, and it was not long before he was the most popular composer in Europe. Gifted with prodigious facility—in one period of eight years he wrote twenty operas—his operas ruled all stages and fixed the standard by which all others were judged.

=Characteristics of Rossini’s Operas=.—They are, on the whole, a _reversion_ to the conventionalized opera of Handel’s time in being written for the singer to exhibit his art and not to express the significance of the drama; this notwithstanding their undoubted charm, the many piquant and original touches in rhythm and harmony, the occasional suggestive instrumentation. An intensely _florid style_ is used not only in the _buffa_ school where it can readily be justified, but in operas of a tragic nature where it is manifestly out of place. In _Semiramide_, for instance, a story of battle, murder and sudden death is told in the same rippling rhythms and highly ornamented melodies that illustrate the intrigues of his _Barbiere di Siviglia_ (Barber of Seville), where they are eminently appropriate.

=His Change of Style=.—This is true, however, only of his works composed for the Italian stage. His _Guillaume Tell_ (William Tell), produced in 1829, five years after his arrival in Paris, showed the influence of his new environment by an almost startling change of style. Elevated and dramatic in treatment, shorn of redundant ornament as befits the character of the subject—taken from Schiller’s play of the same name—it remains his greatest achievement; at least in serious opera. It was also his last work for the stage. It is not known by what strange caprice he practically closed his career as composer at the age of thirty-nine.

REFERENCE.

Oxford History of Music, Vol. V.

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS.

Name the most prominent successor of Gluck in opera.

Compare the two.

Describe the Singspiel.

Name some of Mozart’s operas.

Mention their characteristics and influence.

Give an account of Beethoven’s work in Opera.

Tell about Salieri, Cherubini, Spontini, Rossini.

Give the characteristics of Rossini’s operas.

What change in his style is evident in “William Tell”?

We now approach the period preceding the American and the French Revolutions which so greatly affected the masses of Europe, an influence extended by the wars of Napoleon. Music shows traces of the powerful forces at work, losing the former artificiality and becoming more and more, in the hands of Beethoven, an expression of dramatic and personal feeling.

LESSON XXIV.

THE ORATORIO.

=Oratorio in Italy after Carissimi=.—After the beginning made by Carissimi, the next work of importance in Oratorio is that of =Alessandro Scarlatti=, who established the Aria form as explained in the study of the Opera. The composers of the Italian school of the last part of the 17th and the early part of the 18th century used practically the same methods in Opera and Oratorio, the difference being mainly in the character of the text, and in the earnestness or religious feeling of the composer. Scarlatti is also signalized by his improvements in the Recitative, which resulted in several forms made use of by his successors, _Recitativo Secco_ and Accompanied Recitative. He wrote ten oratorios. Contemporaries whose work should be mentioned are =Antonio Caldara= (1678-1763) and =Leonardo Leo= (1694-1746), a pupil of Scarlatti, who wrote nearly a hundred works for the church, the chief one being the oratorio, _Santa Elena al Calvario_ and a _Miserere_ for a double choir. He was strong in his writing for chorus, making splendid use of the fugal style. Another contemporary of the first rank was =Alessandro Stradella= (1645-1681), whose oratorio, _San Giovanni Battista_ (St. John the Baptist) is a most beautiful work. It contains a free treatment of the accompanying instruments, the arias are clear and well-designed, the chorus writing for five parts is effective as well as ingenious, and the work as a whole shows considerable power of dramatic expression, forming a sort of transition between Scarlatti and Handel. Stradella is said to have been a pupil of Carissimi.

=Oratorio in Germany=.—In Oratorio as in Opera, the style spread to other countries, there, in the case of the Oratorio, ultimately to find a more congenial home; for the Oratorio, in Italy after the time of Stradella, seemed to lose hold on composers and public. The latter did not grasp the fact that the Oratorio had within it one element, the chorus, to give to it a definite individuality. They submitted to the public’s preference for solo singing and made up their oratorios largely of conventional arias—thus inviting comparison with the Opera, and reserved their writing in choral form for their works for the Church service, such as psalms, magnificats, masses and motets. In Germany, the attitude of the people toward religious music, doubtless owing to the Reformation as well as to the serious nature of the people, was much more favorable than in Italy. This temperament is shown by the fact that when German composers cast about for themes for their oratorios they seemed to choose the story of the Passion. The oldest example of the German Oratorio is “The Resurrection of Christ,” written by =Heinrich Schuetz= (1585-1672), a pupil of Giovanni Gabrieli, which was produced at Dresden in 1623. The narrative portions were committed almost entirely to the chorus. We mention also a setting of the Passion, by =Johann Sebastiani=, published in 1672, which contains interspersed chorales, sung as arias by one voice with violin accompaniment, and by =Reinhard Keiser= (1674-1739).

=Use of the Chorale=.—A step in advance was taken when German composers began to use the chorale of the German Protestant Church as the subject for contrapuntal elaboration, a tendency shown in the work of Sebastiani referred to in the preceding paragraph. The Chorale had absorbed into itself the spirit of the Volkslied, and its use supplied the medium for the public to enter fully into the spirit of the oratorio. Two composers who developed the “Passion Music” idea to its height, =Karl Heinrich Graun= (1701-1759) and =Johann Sebastian Bach=, made the Chorale an integral part of their works. The greatest work in oratorio form written by Graun was called _Der Tod Jesu_ (The Death of Jesus), which was first produced in the Cathedral at Berlin in 1755. This work consists of recitatives, airs and choruses, the fugal treatment of the latter being admirable in point of clearness of design and breadth of form. Graun used in this oratorio six chorales. _Der Tod Jesu_, owing to a bequest, is still given in Berlin.

=Bach=.—The greatest of all the settings of the Passion are those by =Johann Sebastian Bach= (1685-1750). The first work in this style by Bach was the one according to “St. John,” in 1723, first performed on Good Friday, 1724, at Leipzig. This work, fine as it is, must yield to the second setting, according to “St. Matthew,” first produced on Good Friday, 1729, afterward revised and given again in 1740. A few notes on the “Passion according to St. Matthew” will serve for both works. The characters introduced are Jesus, Judas, Peter, Pilate, the Apostles and the People. Certain reflections on the narrative are interpreted by a chorus. The text which furnishes the narrative is assigned to the principal tenor. Fifteen chorales of the Lutheran Church are introduced, and in the singing of these the general congregation was expected to join. The choruses contain powerful and dramatic vocal effects, and though not strictly fugal are intricate in their part-writing. A double chorus is used, each chorus having a separate orchestra and organ accompaniment. The performance of this work (St. Matthew Passion) was restricted to Leipzig in the 18th century, and was discontinued altogether in the 19th until Mendelssohn revived it in 1829. It is given very frequently at the present day during the Lenten season, in part or in full. The “Christmas Oratorio” (1734) is really a series of cantatas for each of the first days of the Christmas week, and contains no new ideas so far as form is concerned.

=Stabat Mater=.—In connection with the “Passion” reference should be made to the Latin hymn, “Stabat Mater,” which has been made the subject of treatment in oratorio form, by =Palestrina=, =Giovanni Battista Pergolesi= (1710-1736) for soprano and contralto accompanied by strings and organ, =Emanuele d’Astorga= (1681-1736) for four voices with instrumental accompaniment, the more modern work, in large form, by =Gioacchino Rossini= (1792-1868), most beautiful as music if partaking too much, as critics say, of the sensuous, and the magnificent setting of =Antonin Dvořák= (1841-1904). This work has been placed, by musicians and the public, in the category of the world’s masterpieces of choral writing.