How Music Developed A Critical and Explanatory Account of the Growth of Modern Music

Descent of the Roman Chant from the kithara songs of the Romans and thence from those of the Greeks--First appearance of modern melody--Steps toward the formation of a musical s...

In the growth of modern music the second step was the introduction of harmony. The simultaneous sounding of notes of different pitch in combinations called chords is so essentia...

The great French school of contrapuntists--What counterpoint is, and how it began--Canons and the famous "Sumer is icumen in"--Character of the French music--he masses of Machau...

The great Netherlands school--Okeghem and the mechanics of music--Riddles in tone--The advent of pure beauty--Work of Josquin des Prés--Attempts at expression by Willaert and ot...

We saw that as far back as Dufay's time composers began to introduce secular melodies into the mass. This was an evidence that the ecclesiastical composers had been forced to ma...

Causes which led composers toward a less complex style--The Renaissance and the Reformation--The Council of Trent--Palestrina and his music--Last days of the Roman and Venetian...

The piano, like all our contemporaneous musical instruments, is the result of a long development. Its fundamental principle is the setting of a stretched string in vibration by...

Work of the organ schools of Venice and Rome--Polyphonic playing and the advent of the singing style--Scale playing and the use of the thumb--Bach's fingering and Mozart's vocal...

The development of the instrumental fugue--What is a fugue?--Its combination of polyphony with development of a theme--Johann Sebastian Bach and his organ and clavichord fugues-...

Corelli and his violin style--C. P. E. Bach and his departures from polyphony--General plan and purpose of the early sonata--Haydn and his two principal themes--Mozart and song-...

Early groupings of instruments without definite plan--Significance of the work of Monteverde--Scarlatti's use of the string quartet--Handel and the foundation of the modern styl...

"Sinfonia avanti l'Opera"--Its development into the overture--Effect of this on orchestral composition--The classical symphony--Haydn and his achievements--Exploring the secrets...

Beethoven and his nine symphonies--Significance of his work--His technical alterations--His romanticism--Meaning of classicism and romanticism--The symphonic poem and the progra...

Corelli and the "Sonata da Camera"--His distribution of instruments--John Adam Reinken and the "Hortus Musicus"--Music at the Court of Weimar--Bach and Gossec--The quartets of H...

Religious character of the Greek drama--The early Christian plays--The liturgical drama--Miracle plays and their introduction of abuses--Reformatory efforts of St. Philip Neri--...

History of "Passion" music--Heinrich Schütz and his "Seven Last Words"--His "Passions"--The text of Brockes--Distinguishing features of the forms of Handel and Bach--The former...

Decadence of oratorio after Handel and Bach--Haydn and "The Creation"--Development of descriptive orchestration in oratorio--Haydn's oratorios descriptive and contemplative--Men...

Festival plays and intermezzi--Dreary character of music in plays--Influence of Greek learning--Attempt to resuscitate the dramatic declamation of the Greeks--Galilei and his "U...

Work of Monteverde--His development of recitative and orchestration--Cavalli and his attempts at melodic form--Alessandro Scarlatti--Recitative _stromentato_ and _aria da capo_-...

The opera ends with a dance. In his "Tancredi e Clorinda," an intermezzo produced in Venice in 1624, Monteverde introduced special instrumental effects which were to become of s...

Cimarosa, Rossini, Donizetti, and Bellini--The last writers of the Neapolitan school--Tune for tune's sake--Rossini's improvements in methods of opera writing--Verdi and his thr...

Beaujoyeux and his "Ballet Comique de la Royne"--Production of Cambert's "Pomone" and founding of the Grand Opera--Advent of Lulli--His acquisition of the opera patent--Characte...

His early Italian operas--His conversion and the cold reception of his new ideas in Vienna--Recognized in Paris as Rameau's successor--The conquest of Piccini--Gluck's theory of...

The gradual drift of French opera away from the pure style of Gluck led to the success of one of the most remarkable figures in the history of music, a composer whose works pers...

The story of the introduction of opera into German is sufficiently amusing to form part of an operetta plot. There was no opera of native origin, but the fame of the Italian pro...

Mozart, in "Die Zauberflöte," had touched upon an element which always appeals to the peculiar naïveté of the German character. That element is the supernatural. The Germans lov...

Points of resemblance between Wagner's theories and Peri's--His use of the myth as a subject--How he abandoned the old forms and made a new one--The _leit motiv_ system--What it...

No critical review of the development of the tone art is complete without notice of the intellectual and emotional impulses which governed that development, and of the character...