Part 7

Baini calls the "Kyrie" devout; the "Gloria" animated; the "Credo" majestic; the "Sanctus" angelic; and the "Agnus Dei" prayerful; but it is doubtful if the modern auditor will perceive all these distinctions in listening to the work. Of its dignity and loftiness, however, there can be no question. One can observe readily how close to the composer's heart was the injunction that the words should be clearly understood; in the most important phrases we find counterpoint of the first order (note against note), while in passages where the same words are often repeated Palestrina employed the most beautiful contrapuntal imitations. The voices are so interwoven that wonderful chords greet us in almost every phrase, yet so free from unnecessary dissonance are these, and so clearly founded on the progressions of the triads, that the effect of simplicity is attained even in the midst of the displays of greatest musical skill. It is true that one can find effective chords in the works of the Flemish school, but on examining these closely it will be seen that they have been "filled in," and do not arise spontaneously from the contrapuntal progressions, while with Palestrina the leading of the voices is never disturbed in the slightest degree for the sake of the chord-formation, but all the harmonic effects grow out of the melodic construction of the various parts, or of the musical imitations introduced between the voices. It remains to be stated that the great musical historian Ambros has thrown doubt upon the origin of the Mass just described, and asseverates that not only was it not written as a model at the request of the committee of cardinals, but that there was really no occasion for any especial reform in the matter of church music at the time that it was produced. The weight of authority and the consensus of opinion, however, are here entirely against the eminent German scholar, and the facts as above stated are now almost universally conceded.

In all of Palestrina's church music one cannot fail to notice that he discards the chromatic progressions which his predecessors and contemporaries used so freely; he did this from a devout desire to keep the church modes intact, and if at times, because of this self-denial, he lost some effects of emotional display, on the whole his works gain much in purity and dignity in consequence.

If in Palestrina's Masses we find the beginning of chord-effect, the true principles of harmonic beauty, in his motettes and madrigals one can discern the first masterly touches of the employment of rhythm. Rhythm could only reach its true culmination in the homophony which came at a later epoch, but one can trace a distinct effort in this direction in the shorter and lighter works of the master, who thus may be regarded as a connecting link between the old and the new schools.

In the matter of the old triad-construction of his chords, however, he was inflexible; Des Prés and Di Lasso might use dissonances to express passion, but he held this kind of passion as too human to enter into his pure church-music. Monteverde soon after brought in the free use of the seventh-chords, yet the careful student will find these slyly introduced in many a work of the 16th century; he will however, find few such attempts in Palestrina.

How earnestly this composer regarded his art, and how deeply he felt its responsibilities may be gathered from his own words:--

"Music exerts a great influence upon the minds of mankind, and is intended not only to cheer these, but also to guide and to control them, a statement which has not only been made by the ancients, but which is found equally true to-day. The sharper blame, therefore, do those deserve who misemploy so great and splendid a gift of God in light or unworthy things, and thereby excite men, who of themselves are inclined to all evil, to sin and misdoing. As regards myself, I have from youth been affrighted at such misuse, and anxiously have I avoided giving forth anything which could lead anyone to become more wicked or godless. All the more should I, now that I have attained to riper years, and am not far removed from old age, place my entire thoughts on lofty, earnest things such as are worthy of a Christian."

With these words does Palestrina dedicate his first book of Motettes to Cardinal d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, and no historian or reviewer could give a truer summing up of Palestrina's character and its influence on his music than he has here done for himself.

CLAUDIO MONTEVERDE

In Claudio Monteverde we have to do with one of those composers who mark an epoch in art. Starting apparently in full touch with the ideas of the generation into which they happen to be born, such masters acquire originality as they proceed, and, guided entirely by the depth and reliability of their own intuitions, almost imperceptibly digress from the methods in vogue, and at the end leave the world a rich heritage of thoroughly original and enjoyable works. Such a genius adorned the beginning of the sixteenth century in Josquin des Près, another was the richly gifted Orlando Lasso, and in later times many such have appeared; the epoch of modern romantic music being peculiarly rich in them.

Claudio Monteverde was born at Cremona, in Lombardy, in the year 1568. He was the son of poor parents. From earliest childhood he manifested a love of music, and very soon became proficient upon the viola, which even then had become perfected, through the work of Andrea Amati and Gaspar da Salo.

While still a boy, Monteverde was engaged as viola player in the private orchestra of the Duke of Mantua, and there his talent became so evident that the ducal music director, Messer Marc Antonio Ingeneri, taught him counterpoint and the art of composition as it was then practised. Under this stimulation, Monteverde published his first composition at the age of sixteen, in the year 1584. They were called "Canzonettas for three voices," and were printed at Venice. Quite naturally, considering the youth of the composer, these compositions do not show the originality which later rendered his works famous. Their more noticeable peculiarity, judging them from the standpoint of their own day, was a degree of laxity, at times approaching carelessness, in counterpoint. It is evident even thus early that Monteverde's ear for melody enabled him to tolerate harmonic faults between the voices which, without this appreciation of melodious flow, would have been highly disagreeable.

His position in the service of the prince was by no means a sinecure. A letter of his brother, Giulio Cæsar Monteverde, declares that he was incessantly occupied, not alone with the music of the church, but also with that for chamber concerts, ballets, and all sorts of divertissements, making constant demands upon the fertility of the overflowing invention of the young musician. He seems to have been in a somewhat personal relation to the Duke, and all through life he evinced his attachment to members of the Gonzaga family.

His first book of madrigals was published in 1587, when the young composer had reached the age of eighteen. Five other books followed them, dated 1593, 1594, 1597, 1599, and finally 1614. All these were printed at Venice, which was then the chief book-making city of Europe. In a later portion of this discourse the innovations characterizing the third book of madrigals will be more fully considered. Meanwhile Monteverde appears to have steadily advanced in his art, and in the favor of the prince. The brother's letter, already mentioned, is authority for the statement that in 1599 he spent some months at the baths of Spa, and brought back from thence certain traits of the French style.

Very soon after the publication of the third book of madrigals, Monteverde found a critic. A certain Canon Artusi, of St. Saviour, in Bologna, published a brochure upon "The Imperfection of Modern Music," taking for his text one of the madrigals in Monteverde's third book.

This led to further communications from Monteverde himself, prefixed to one of his later volumes, in which he declares that "harmony is the lady of the words" (_signora della orazione_), meaning thereby that the composer must first consider the dramatic needs of his text, and only thereafter permit himself to be governed by those of music as such.

Upon the death of the ducal music director, Ingeneri, Monteverde succeeded to the place. This appears to have been in 1603, according to the preface to the sixth set of his madrigals (in 1614), in which he speaks of having been in the service of the Duke of Mantua ten years.

The famous "representative style," in other words, dramatic music, had already been discovered, as recounted at greater length in the essay upon Italy. It is sufficient for our present purpose to compare the dates. It was about 1595 that Vincenzo Gallilei intoned at Count Bardi's his epoch-making monologue upon "Ugolino," and in 1597 the first opera, "Dafne," was privately performed at the house of Count Corsi. In 1600 the first opera, "Eurydice," the poem by Rinuccini and music by Jacopo Peri, was publicly performed upon the occasion of the marriage of Henry IV., of France, to Catherine de Medici. This work has the double honor of having been the first opera ever publicly performed and the first opera ever printed. A copy of the original edition of A. D. 1600 is now in the Newberry Library of Chicago. The fundamental problem of the new style was that of furnishing appropriate musical cadences for the impressive utterance of the words of the text. Hence the musical handling of "Eurydice" is very meagre. There is only one short instrumental ritornello, and only one short aria, of sixteen measures. Almost the entire remainder of the work is in a rather stiff and formal recitative. No attempt is made at instrumental coloring. The accompaniment is simply intended to support the voices and assure the singers of their pitch, quite after the ideas advanced by Artistoxenos, and applied universally in Greek tragedy. The tonality in "Eurydice" is almost wholly minor.

Whether Monteverde had opportunity of seeing any of these performances we have no means of knowing. At all events he may well have possessed a copy of the published "Eurydice." And so it was no doubt with pleasure that in 1607, upon the occasion of the marriage of Francesco Gonzeaga with Margherita, Infanta of Savoy, he received a commission to prepare a "dramma per musica" for the festivities. The subject chosen was "Arianna" (Ariadne), the text prepared by Rinuccini. In this work for the first time Monteverde had opportunity to give free rein to his powers. No doubt he realized that he had to present his work before hearers who had attended upon the performances of "Eurydice," and were full of its novel effects. One of his own singers, Rasi, had been engaged in the Florentine performances. The effect of "Arianna" was extraordinary, even prodigious. The aria of the deserted Ariadne, _Lasciatemi morir_, melted the hearers to tears. Monteverde's rival, Marco da Gagliano, who had also been commissioned to prepare a new setting of "Dafne" for the same occasion, was astonished like all the rest. G. B. Doni, in his treatise upon "Scenic Music," holds Monteverde's aria for a master-work indeed. Such was the entrance of the master into the new style. "Arianna" had a long life. As late as 1640 it was played in the theatre of S. Mose, in Venice. The success of this work naturally led to others in the new style. Hence, one year later, another opera, "Orfeo," the text by a writer not now known, and a "Ballo del Ingrate," in which, Ambros says, the music, "in spite of the ancient gods, who figure in the text, stands for the first time in the magic glow of the romantic."

Monteverde was now in the fullness of his powers. He had reached the age of forty-six. He was at once the most original of all Italian musicians of the time, and the most distinguished. Hence upon the death, in 1614, of Giulo Cæsare Martinengo, the musical director of St. Mark's, in Venice, Monteverde was called to the place, which both by reason of its celebrity as already the appurtenance of great composers for two centuries, and on account of its relation to the official life of Venice, was perhaps the most desirable one in the whole world. The salary paid the deceased conductor had been two hundred ducats yearly; that of Monteverde was made three hundred at the start, and in addition a sum of fifty ducats for expenses of removing from Mantua. In 1616 the salary was raised again to four hundred ducats, and later he was awarded the free use of a house in the canon's close. Valuable gratuities were voted him upon several occasions, as one hundred ducats, Dec. 14, 1642, one hundred and fifty in 1629, etc. Honors came fast upon him. When he was invited to Bologna, in order to direct the music for some festivity, a delegation of distinguished citizens met him a long way out upon the route, and orations and formal recognitions of the honor done the city by his accepting the invitation had full place, according to the imposing forms of the time.

In spite of the distinction which Monteverde had gained in the musical dramas already mentioned, it was not for several years after entering upon his duties at St. Mark's that he found opportunity to pursue his ideal. Between 1614 and 1624 he appeared only as church composer, excepting now and then when he produced music for a state _fête_, for as yet there was no public opera house in the world. In the year 1637 the first one was erected at Venice, in the parish of S. Cassiano. But previously, in 1624, the senator Girolamo Moncenigo invited Monteverde to compose a new work in the representative style, which accordingly he did, and it was privately performed in the Moncenigo palace. It was called "Il Combatimento di Tancredi e Clorinda," an intermezzo. The story was taken from Tasso's "Jerusalem Delivered," and represented Clorinda going in search of her lover, Tancred, in disguise of a young knight. Through some misunderstanding a duel between them was unavoidable, and at the moment when the swords flash and the strokes make grim accents in the pretty love story, Monteverde had the happy thought of introducing the pizzicato effect with the strings; and later when Clorinda falls, mortally wounded, the suspense is indicated by the still usual orchestral means, the tremolo. These striking effects, however, were by no means Monteverde's chief claim to memory for this work, for throughout, if we may believe the hearers (the music having disappeared), the music accurately reproduced and interpreted the feeling of the story, and the hearers were intensely absorbed, and at the critical moment moved to tears.

Another celebrated work of Monteverde was a solemn requiem which he composed in 1621, for the funeral services in honor of Cosmos II., in the church S. Giovanni e S. Paulo. Concerning this, the opera librettist, Giuol Strozzi, writes complimentarily if not clearly, that the music "depicted grief in the Mixolydian tone, the happy discovery of Sappho; and the _Dies Iræ_ and the well intoned _De Profundis_, by their novelty and mastery, awakened in the hearers the greatest wonder."

From this time onward, Monteverde composed often in the new style. In 1627 he composed for the court of Parma five intermezzi; in 1629, for the birthday of Vito Morisini, a cantata, "Il Rosajo fiorito"; and in 1630, for the marriage of the daughter of his patron, the senator Moncenigo, to Lorenzo Giustiniani, he wrote to a poem by Strozzi, "Proserpina Rapita." Here again the enthusiasm of the hearers was unbounded. The magic combination of drama and song in choruses, dances, and orchestration was magical. Unfortunately almost all the operatic and church compositions of Monteverde have been lost. But his continual progress in the art of orchestration is shown now and then in the chance allusions of his contemporaries. Thus we are told that in 1631, upon the day when the votive church S. Maria della Salute was opened by the Doge (in memory of the stay of the plague), a solemn service was also held in St. Mark's, when a great effect was made in the _Gloria_ and _Credo_ by the resounding trombones.

As soon as a public opera house was opened in Venice, the demands upon Monteverde's talent as opera composer became more frequent. Thus followed one important work after another, until almost the end of his long and honored life. In 1642, at the age of seventy-four, he produced his last opera, "L'Incoronazione di Poppea," which had the customary effect of novelty and nobility.

Monteverde had been happily married while still living in Mantua. He had two sons, one of whom became a priest, the other a physician. Upon the death of his wife he entered the church, and took holy orders, so that from the age of sixty-five to the close of his life he was priest as well as composer and musical director. In person he seems to have been tall, rather meagre in figure, and the few existing portraits represent him as serious, perhaps even ascetic, in face. After a short illness, Monteverde died, in 1643. His funeral was held in St. Mark's, under the musical direction of his pupil, Giovanni Rovetta. But a second and more formal service was held on the 15th of December, 1643, in the Frari church, under the direction of another of his pupils, Giambattista Marinoni, musical director at the cathedral of Padua. The great master was buried in the Frari church, in a chapel at the left of the choir. No stone bears his name to mark the spot.

Monteverde's position in the world of art might almost be designated as that of "father of the opera." For, while it is true that he did not himself directly discover this great form of applied music, he certainly was the first to produce dramatic works characterized by the same general ideas as those which prevail at the present day. The connection of Jacopo Peri with opera was altogether fleeting and temporary, having been limited to the two works already mentioned. Monteverde, who was already a vigorous and fully established musician and composer at the time of Peri's first attempt, took hold of the new art form with such vigor and readiness, and with such truth of insight, that he must always stand in the place of honor. Peri's conception of the musical part of opera was rather small and limited. What he sought was a truthful declamation of the text in the matter of cadence and emphasis. To this Monteverde added a deeper insight into the feeling pervading the dramatic situation. This gave the key-note to his music, whether that of the voices, or of voices and instruments together.

This honor belongs still more incontestably to Monteverde when it is remembered what innovations he made in the general points of musical structure and instrumentation, both of which place his fame in the strongest possible light as that of a master. In his earliest canzonettas the defects are those of a half-taught composer, rather than of one deliberately marking out a new path. But in the third book of madrigals there are innovations which have been pointed out by all critical writers upon the history of harmony, especially by Choron and Fétis. In the madrigal "Stracciami pur il côre" (the music of which is given entire in Burney's "History of Music," Vol. III.), the rhythm has more movement, the metrical form is better, there are natural cadences, and prolonged dissonances of a materially different character to anything preceding them. Fétis mentions, at the words _non puo morir d'amore_, double dissonances, arising by suspension of 9--4, 9--7--4, 6--5--4, the latter having an extremely disagreeable effect. Modern tonality is anticipated by the use of the leading tone. In his fifth book of madrigals he gives free rein to his ideas, and introduces dissonances without preparation, especially the seventh and ninth on the dominant. There is also a diminished seventh. He thus possessed the means of a rational harmonic accentuation and dramatic characterization.

In the department of orchestration, Monteverde may properly be considered the originator of the art, and here again we come upon one of those accidental connections, or harmonies, between the man and his environment which impart to art-history so much the character of a chapter in development. It was Monteverde who first placed the violin in its place of honor in the orchestra. Peri's orchestra contained two tenor-viols, but no violin. While still retaining the chittarone, or large guitars, cembali, or harpsichord, Monteverde had two bass-viols, ten tenor-viols (his own instrument, with whose possibilities he was acquainted), two violi da gamba (a tenor-viol with frets), one double harp, two small French violins, four trombones, a regal or small reed organ (for sustaining tones), one small octave flute, one clarion, and three trumpets with mutes. From the complete loss of anything like orchestral scores or individual parts, it has been surmised that these players exercised their own judgment as to what and when to play. This, however, appears impossible. Otherwise the peculiar effects graphically employed for dramatic coloration would not have been produced. Such effects as the pizzicati and tremolo of violins in "Tancred", and the trombone effects in the mass, mentioned above, do not come by the happy chance of players putting in notes at their unregulated wills. The characteristic difference between the orchestra of Monteverde and Peri was in the possession of means of prolonging tones, and thereby rendering the music impressive and pathetic. Without the stringed instruments this would forever have remained impossible.

ALESSANDRO SCARLATTI

There has never been in the musical history of the world such another blossoming into song as took place in Italy after the invention of the representative style. The great master, Monteverde, lived to see the opening of the first public opera houses, and by the end of the century there were theatres devoted to the musical drama in almost every city of Italy. Monteverde was succeeded by several composers, in part contemporaries of each other, among whom the most eminent names were those of Cesti, Lotti, and Legrenzi. All the tuneful instincts of the Italian nation came to expression in the new form of art, and the theatres vied with each other in obtaining the composition of new works by the best masters available. In these there were two national instincts operative: that for the drama, and that for tune. Hence we begin to find, very early in the development, the merely declamatory consideration which ruled Peri, and the additional element of musical characterization which led Monteverde into many new paths, giving place to the merely tuneful, and delaying the drama until an aria had time to fully complete itself.

In its earliest forms the aria gained in symmetry and tunefulness, without seriously hampering the dramatic movement. Soon, however, the voice began to attract attention to itself, and in the illustration of its previously forgotten talents the action of the drama was still further delayed.

Many illustrations of these generalized statements might be cited, but those following later are perhaps sufficient for showing the point which had been reached in the development when the great genius Alessandro Scarlatti appeared.