Part 19

In "Il Trovatore" Verdi made another stride in advance. During the two years that passed between the production of "Rigoletto" and that of "Il Trovatore," a great change had taken place in his style. There is observable in the score of the later opera a larger variety in his harmonies, and the basses move more independently and more fluently. The accompaniments are less perfunctory, and are given a more artistic taste than that of merely emphasizing the rhythms in a conventional way. The instrumentation is richer, the parts often move more freely, and the general effect is more serious and impressive; while the varieties of tone-color are more affluent than in any of the composer's earlier scores. In other respects, notwithstanding the popularity of the opera, we do not think it is superior to "Rigoletto." On the contrary, it seems to us to lack something of the artistic dignity that pertains to its immediate predecessor. It is overfull of mere tune-making that does not fairly echo the dramatic sentiment of the situations on which it is expended. In "Rigoletto," Verdi seems to have escaped wholly from the influence of Donizetti. In "Il Trovatore" the methods of Donizetti are constantly recalled, and the opera seems cast in the same mould as "Lucrezia Borgia." The music given to Azucena, graceful and ear-pleasing as it is, for the most part appears trivial and frivolous when it is considered in relation to the passion it is intended to emphasize. Still, forty years after its birth it remains one of the most popular operas on the stage, even in Germany. "La Traviata" overflows with exquisite melodies, but here the composer has been more successful in wedding sound to sense. His theme was sentimental rather than dramatic, and the sensuous tunes harmonized well with the spirit of the text. Elegance, refinement and warmth of style characterize the score throughout, and the proprieties are not violated except in the vulgar air, _Di provenza_, the music of which, to say nothing of its reiteration of the same rhythmical phrase bar after bar, is ridiculously inappropriate to the sentiment of the situation. "Les Vêpres Sicilliennes" showed no further change in the composer's methods, and the same may be said of "Un ballo in Maschera," "La Forza del Destino" and "Don Carlos." There are fine dramatic and instrumental moments in all these works, but in none of them is there any advance beyond "Rigoletto." Moreover, there are many lapses back to the composer's "Ernani" period. He was not yet able or willing to break wholly with the past. It is true that he continued to give more and more care to those portions of his score that dealt with the action of the drama, instead of bestowing attention on the composition of catching melodies and _ensembles_, to the neglect of the intermediate parts. In his "Simon Boccanegra," however, which succeeded "Les Vêpres Sicilliennes," he gave the first impressive indication of his sympathy with the more modern school of opera that existed outside of Italy; and in this work he essayed a more declamatory recitative, a deeper regard for tone-color, and a more serious devotion to the dramatic sentiment of the scene and action, and less to the mere formal aria. In other words, Verdi became, to some extent, a revolutionist in his art, and was the first Italian master to recognize what was going on in the world of opera beyond the confines of his own country. The work in which this cry of progress was sounded met with complete failure, and for a time he returned to the old order of things, or else approached the new with faint-heartedness. When, after four years' silence, he was heard again, he was boldly and unequivocally an advocate of the new movement, as "Aïda" amply testifies. Here he abandons, for good and all, the conventional forms to which he had so long adhered. He has considered his libretto as a whole, and not as so many opportunities for tune-making; he has attempted to maintain a proper and uniform local color--has tried to create the impression of an unbroken and self-consistent dramatic entirety; he has essayed to impart as much interest to the recitatives, and to the more declamatory aspects of his score, as to the more purely melodious. The melody flows on with the familiar fluency, but it is tempered by dignity. The orchestra looms into primary importance as part of a logical whole, instead of remaining the mere accompaniment, more or less artistic, that it is in the composer's other scores. It is Verdi still, but a Verdi matured in style and fully ripened in artistic judgment,--a Verdi thoroughly awake, for the first time, to the fact that the horizon of art is bounded only by the height from which it is viewed.

In "Aïda" there is little that can be detached from its stage surroundings without loss of effect. That Verdi was satisfied with the results achieved by him in this opera is evidenced by his revision and rewriting of "Simon Boccanegra," in which the earlier melodies are retained, but in which the dramatic portions of the score are deepened and intensified, and made even more impressive than were the like features in the score of "Aïda." His "Othello," if not a still further step in advance, maintains to the full the position now assumed by the master. It is interesting to compare his treatment of the tragedy with that of his predecessor, Rossini. In all that pertains to dignity, sympathy with the spirit of the poem, seriousness of style and sincerity of art, the advantage lies wholly with the modern composer. Rossini's "Othello," however, emphasized an epoch in serious opera, for it is the first opera written throughout in _recitativo strumento_ to the exclusion of the customary _recitativo secco_.

"Othello" exemplified that Verdi's conversion to the methods of modern musical thought was complete. The spectacle of a composer whose fame is established, whose labors have met with a substantial return that has placed him beyond the need of further toil, who has reached an age at which most artistic careers have closed, beginning as it were, _de novo_, is a rare one. That he said anything in his more recent operas that he had not already said is doubtful; his methods of thought remained unchanged, but the language in which he uttered them was more refined and more dignified. He was, however, to make a still greater departure from his past; and it was accomplished in his "Falstaff," in which at fourscore he was to show himself a modern of moderns. The progress was astonishing: but after all, it only emphasized one of the composer's familiar sayings, "If you want the new in art, you must return to the old"; for he has gone back to the fundamental principles of opera as enunciated by Gluck. There is here a wholesale abandoning of the formal divisions in opera. Complexity has given way to simplicity. The music harmonizes with the characteristic spirit of the text; the melodies are brief; recitative is sparingly used, and musical declamation makes up the greater portion of the score. The orchestra no longer follows, but has risen to equal importance with the voice, and lends its own appropriate color and accent to the illustration and enforcement of the sentiment of the text. Graceful and exquisite tunefulness is maintained, but it falls into its proper place and continues no longer than it justly expresses the sentiment of the situation. There is a beautiful balance between the voices and the orchestra, and though the instrumentation is strikingly modern, it is free from the restless and wearying Wagnerian polyphony and excess of tone-color. Part-writing, an essential to which little attention has been paid by Italian composers of opera, comes into unusual though not brilliant prominence, and always with delightful effect. The scoring is never overloaded; the right touch always comes in the right place; and every change of color has its special meaning as a strengthening of the emotion of the moment, as indicated by the stage action. In brief, the latest work of the composer is his most masterly, musically considered; and what is most astonishing is, that it suggests nothing of its creator's age, except the experience, the mellowness, and the enlarged art feeling that have come with it. And yet it is more important as a manifestation of the composer's capacity to receive and to adopt new impressions in his extreme old age, than it is as a work of art. In other words, its value is of a personal rather than of a general nature, and Verdi remains to the end a great opera composer of world-wide popularity, who has exercised no influence and made no impression on the art of which he is so brilliant a representative.

In closing this estimate of Verdi as a composer of opera, we may add that even in his most absolute departure from the traditions of Italian opera, as he found them, he has remained essentially Italian. It has been argued that in his later works he falls under the sway of Wagner; but this, we think, would be difficult to demonstrate. He may not have remained uninfluenced by the German master's theories regarding the character of opera librettos, but musically, he is always a true son of his native land. His younger Italian contemporaries have far outrun him as reformers. From present indications it would appear that Verdi is destined to be the last of the long line of Italian opera composers whose theories were those of the old school, more or less modified in respect to style or fashion, as time passed. He has had no imitators and he will leave no disciples. In this he will also be singular, for from the dawn of opera to the present time every great composer of Italian opera has left behind him a survivor who has followed in his footsteps--at least until he has found out an individual path for himself. From the era when Nicolo Logroscino invented the concerted _finale_ for comic opera, and it was first extended to serious opera by Pasiello, Italian serious opera began to break away from its earlier rigid form and to congeal into that which prevailed down to the period when the reform, with which we have just dealt, gave to it a death blow. From Pasiello and Piccinni, composer after composer appeared, each succeeding one overlapping his immediate predecessor and carrying the development of the school a step farther. Cimarosa followed Piccinni in this way, and was in turn followed by Rossini, who was succeeded by Mercadante, Pacini, Bellini, Donizetti and Verdi. Here, as we have already observed, the line abruptly ends, and not with the greatest of the brilliant group. Which, if any, of Verdi's operas will survive it is difficult to predict, but we think that "Rigoletto" has the best chance; but none of them is destined to the immortality of "La Serva Padrona," "Il Matrimonio Segreto," "La Sonnambula" and "Il Barbiere di Siviglia."

It only remains for us to consider Verdi's Requiem, a work that has been praised with as much enthusiasm as it has been condemned with acrimony. Dr. Hans von Bülow, speaking for one school of criticism, and with no very great discretion, asserted this composition to be a "monstrosity" that would do no credit to an ordinary pupil of any music school in Germany. It is possible that Dr. von Bülow viewed the work from a purely pedagogic standpoint and with special reference to transgressions of musical grammar. In matters of this kind much depends on the esteem in which the composer holds arbitrary rules, and on his right to heed or to disobey them as he may see fit. Much, too, depends on the standpoint, prejudiced or otherwise, from which the critic considers the work. An ordinary pupil of any music school in Germany may or may not be able to write more correctly than Verdi has written in numerous places in this Requiem, but there is more in music than a strict observance of the rules of musical grammar; and it is in no need of demonstration that it is beyond the power of any ordinary pupil in any music school to write music of so high an order. In fact, be the work what it may, it has not been equalled in its kind by any contemporary graduates of one of the schools to which Dr. von Bülow refers. Another fault that has been found with this work is that it is not sacred in character. Reduced to its simplest terms this charge means that Verdi's Requiem is not conceived in the same spirit that Bach conceived his "Matthew-Passion" and Handel his "Messiah." This, in turn, indicates a belief that it is compulsory on a warm-blooded and highly emotional Italian to appeal to God in the mood that is favored of the more stolid and less impulsive German. The mere matter of difference in temperament makes it impossible to institute a comparison between the sacred music of Verdi and that of Bach and Handel. Then, too, there is overmuch of cant in perfunctory discussion of what is and what is not sacred in music; and after all, the words to which the music is composed would seem to have more to do with the matter than does the music itself. Considered in the abstract, it is no more reasonable to argue that Bach's music is essentially religious than it would be to argue that Verdi's is not. The argument must be decided, in either case, on arbitrary principles and according to the prejudices of those who participate in it. It would not be easy to define exactly in what the religious element of so-called sacred music is apparent, whether such music be of German or of Italian origin. It is beyond all contradiction that Handel utilized many of his Italian opera airs for his oratorios, and that what began by being profane ended by becoming serious. These airs were none the more profane for their operatic origin, and none the more sacred for their transferences to oratorio. The English and German speaking races have accepted Bach and Handel as the noblest exponents of what is understood by them as the religious sentiment in music; but that acceptance does not make a law for the Latin races,--for the Italians, the Spaniards and the French. Of the unequalled genius of Bach and of Handel, and of the large nobility of their music, there cannot be two opinions; but they wrote after the fashion of their day, and the musical style they adopted was not chosen because it was abstractly religious in character, but because it was the only style they knew, and it was the style common to the stage and the church, save that when adapted to the latter it was more contrapuntal in treatment. That choral fugues, single or double, strict or free, are radically or essentially religious in feeling, still remains to be proved. No man and no body of men are entitled to decide dogmatically that this or that style is the only one appropriate for sacred music. If Handel can be permitted to take airs written for purely dramatic works, and in what was then considered a purely dramatic spirit, by the most dramatic composer of his time, and use them for sacred works, why shall Verdi be condemned for composing his Requiem in a dramatic spirit, at first hand? It may be argued that Palestrina, among Italians, set the pattern for a dignified and undramatic style of church music; but it can also be urged, and with justice, that the music which Palestrina set to solemn words differed in no wise from the madrigals he composed to words of far other import. In judging Verdi's Requiem, as in judging other works of art ably and conscientiously made, we should try to look at it from the composer's point of view. In the abstract, there is nothing more suggestively sacred in the music of _I know that my Redeemer liveth_, than there is in that of _Home, Sweet Home_. The text makes the only difference. The foundation of the art and science of music is wholly arbitrary, but the laws of the school stop at the point at which the individuality and the imagination of the master composer begin to manifest themselves.

Verdi's Requiem is conceived in a spirit wholly antipodal to that in which Bach and Handel conceived their works. His, however, is the spirit of his time and nation, as was also theirs. Those who have accepted the "Matthew-Passion" as the culmination of what music can achieve in religion, condemn this Requiem as theatrical, maintaining that its melodies are constantly suggestive of opera and its more vigorously dramatic moments of stage effect; but the composer does not view it in the same way. He has written as an Italian Roman Catholic of to-day felt inspired to write, and has made no pretence of attempting to write as a German Lutheran wrote over one hundred and fifty years ago. That the work is one of great power in its way, and often reaches a high point of impressiveness, has never been denied. Whether it is religious music or not cannot be determined except according to the prejudices of those who believe, on the one hand, that it is, and of those who believe, on the other, that it is not. Verdi and the majority of his countrymen are of the former opinion, and there is no universally received principle of musical art that can be brought forward to prove that they are in error. It is an argument that must be settled on either side by race partialities. Moreover, at what point a composer shall be checked in interpreting his text as he best understands it, cannot be easily decided. The Requiem was written to do honor to the memory of Verdi's friend, Manzoni, and that the composer acquitted himself of his task in a spirit of sincerity, both devotional and artistic, admits of no doubt. It is an Italian Requiem, and was so intended to be; and, therefore, it is useless, and something more, to find fault with it because it is not German. Its ultimate fate will not be decided by the critics, but will rest on the success or the failure of the appeal it makes to posterity. Verdi, though he has left no permanent mark on his art, has been the most popular opera composer of his time, and his extraordinary musical growth toward the close of his career indicates that there was in him a capacity for far higher work than he achieved. It is to be regretted that he did not sooner fall into line with the musical spirit of the age; nevertheless, he has made an honorable and dignified name in his art, and one that must always be mentioned with veneration.

MUSIC IN ITALY

Toward the end of the Middle Ages, the morning of a new and powerful intellectual life began to dawn. Renewed industry and commerce created wealth. In large and flourishing cities, the sense of liberty and of independence from the pressure of feudal rule united citizens in powerful corporations.

With wealth and liberty, literature, art and science found a favorable field in which to fructify.

From Italy the new light spread over the other European countries. The Italians, everywhere surrounded by the sublime remains of Greek and Roman art, recovered first from the lethargy and confusion, caused by the great immigration of Northern nations. In Bologna, Pisa, Padua, Parma, Naples and other cities, universities and high schools were founded, where it is said, thousands of students from all countries flocked to listen to the teaching of great masters; and in this rich, inspiring and varied spectacle, Dante was the noble central figure.

The development of music, in Italy, kept pace with that of literature, and its first emanations were based on the music of ancient Greece, so far as its few surviving musical hymns could be deciphered.

Greece disappeared as a nation after the Roman conquest, and its music vanished at the same time. The musical revival was an entirely new departure which dated from the appearance of the early Christian converts at Rome, during the time of the Apostles. These neophytes tried to introduce the old tunes which they had heard in the holy city. But such strange melodies could not, of course, find ready adoption, and they were suppressed during the general persecutions. They were, it is true, used in the worship which was secretly carried on in the catacombs. Here they survived, transmitted from generation to generation by oral communication only, during the three centuries that preceded the formal recognition of Christianity by the state.

As text and music were greatly corrupted through such transmission, Saint Ambrose, bishop of Milan, made, about the year 384, a collection of the sacred tunes then in use, trying to restore them to their original form; and he appended to the collection a code of technical laws, in order to prevent future corruptions of the music. Saint Gregory the Great made many additions (590 A. D.) to the work of Saint Ambrose, and at the same time tried to establish more comprehensive musical laws. He was the first to revive, in their completeness, the eight modes used by the Greeks, and which supplanted the four used in the time of Saint Ambrose. The collection of Gregory included, also, many new tunes and hymns, together with music to the antiphones for the entire ecclesiastical year. All this he gave in an improved mode of musical notation (Semiography), and he called this new collection "Antiphonar."

The next stage in musical development was the important work of Guido of Arezzo (1030), a Benedictine monk of Pomposa, who wrote voluminously on musical theory and on the condition of the music of his time. It has been the rule with historians of music to attribute to Guido many discoveries which were doubtless made by other monks. Thus, he is credited with the invention of counterpoint, solmisation, the staff, the hexachord, the harmonic or Guidonian hand (see page 137), and the monochord. It is doubtful if research will ever be able to establish with accuracy exactly what we owe to Guido, but it is certain that he invented solmisation, by applying to the diatonic scale certain syllables of a hymn dedicated to John the Baptist, and they introduced new light and greater facility into the study of music. The modification of Guido's solmisation by the substitution of the more vocal syllable "do" for "ut," has been generally adopted; but the French, whose u is, by nature, sufficiently vocal, have not felt the need of this change.

In the early middle ages the entire study and teaching of science and art, so far as it is known, was in the hands of the monks. They did their utmost to maintain a clear distinction between learned and popular music. Thus it happened that the folk-song, the utterance of the people, had its own line of development. The earliest attempts in writing learned music date from the time of Hucbald, a Benedictine monk of Flanders (840-930 A. D.) and of the staunchest of his followers, Jean Perotin; but Hucbald was not the inventor of counterpoint. The principle of imitation and the foundations of canon and fugue, were laid in Northern Europe; the first great school of composition was established in the Netherlands. Elsewhere in this work will be found a systematic and full treatment of this period. We need therefore only direct attention to that essay on the subject, which establishes the chronological connection of the Netherland masters with the great era of ecclesiastical music at Rome.