CHAPTER X

THE GOLDEN AGE OF POLYPHONY

Invention of music printing--The Reformation--The immediate successors of Josquin; Adrian Willaert and the Venetian school; Germany and England--Orlando di Lasso--Palestrina; his life--The Palestrina style; the culmination of vocal polyphony--Conclusion.

I

The deep vital forces which had for two hundred years been urging Italy to magnificent achievement broke through into music during the course of the sixteenth century. Music was, as she has always been, the last to respond to a general movement; but the response, when it came, entailed an entire reconstruction of the art. All through the century the process of reconstruction was active. It was, however, gradual in its working. Only toward the very end of the century a few bold explorers and experimenters turned their backs upon the past, cut loose from the old art of music and started in to build with new stone and new tools a new art. We have to do in this chapter with the old art; on the one hand, with influences which boldly altered it, and with new developments which were set free through these alterations; on the other, with its ultimate perfection and consequent end.

The invention of music-printing just before the beginning of the century had a powerful influence upon the development of music. The beautiful manuscripts in which early music has been preserved to us were the work for the most part of monks, and are another evidence of the restriction of music to the church. With the invention of printing came a liberation from this restraint. Music circulated through the lay society--all kinds of music, both secular and sacred--it stepped from the dim vast cathedrals and went among the people and entered into their homes and into their lives. The world of men and women welcomed it and changed it, formed it to the expression of their joys and sorrows. The superhuman intricacies of counterpoint and canon little by little withered and fell by the way.

Ulrich Han, of Ingolstadt, in 1476 solved the problem of printing music by means of movable types, but his invention seems to have languished until other enterprising men took it up. In Italy this was done by Ottaviano dei Petrucci, born in 1466 at Fossombrone, near Ancona. Petrucci, one of the first monopolists in the business of printing music, was, like Aldus Manutius, a man of good birth and fortune. Some time before 1498 he had established himself at Venice, and obtained from the municipal council the sole privilege, for twenty years, of printing figured music (_canto figurato_), and music in the tablature of the organ and lute. This meant that, so far as Venice was concerned, all the published lamentations, frottole, motets, and masses were to issue from Petrucci’s press.

His first publication in 1501 was a collection of ninety-six pieces, most of them written for three or four voices, by Okeghem, Hobrecht, Josquin, Isaak, and others. The printing was done by a double process: first the staff, then the notes, in a small quarto, with fine black ink. The parts stood opposite one another on the open page, thus:

soprano │ tenor alto │ bass

The registry or 'fit’ of the notes was perfect, and the effect of the whole was admirable.

This expensive double process, however, was superseded about five years later by another, simpler one, involving only one impression. In 1511 Petrucci left his plant at Venice in the hands of others and returned to Fossombrone. Two years later he obtained a patent from Pope Leo X for all the printing in the papal states for a period of fifteen years. Petrucci’s last publication, a collection of eighty-three motets, is dated 1523. His works are rare and highly valued as antique specimens of printing, and the man himself is also remembered for the standards of neatness and precision which he established.

Pierre Attaignant is said to be the first to introduce music printing by means of movable types into France. In the nine years from 1527 to 1533 Attaignant printed nineteen books of motets of various French and foreign masters. These prints are also very rare and historically important. His work was still going on in 1543, but it seems that the famous Ballards were soon to take it up. The names not only of printers, but of the engravers and founders of these first music types are justly preserved. Pierre Hautin was engraver for Attaignant, and Etienne Briard a founder at Avignon. Briard furnished the first known specimens of round notes, in place of the usual quadrangular shapes, and these were used for the first time in printing the works of Carpentras in 1532. This, however, was an exception, as the round notes were not generally introduced into print until about the year 1700. Le Bé was another well-known type founder. His types were of the sort which printed notes and lines simultaneously. Each individual type contained a note and a portion of the staff; but later Le Bé adopted Petrucci’s method of double impressions.

Adrian Leroy, a lute player, singer, and composer, appears as the next printer of renown in Paris after Attaignant. Leroy presently joined forces with another follower of the craft named Ballard--incidentally marrying the daughter of the house--and in 1552 the firm obtained a patent as sole printers of music for King Henry II of France. This patent, frequently renewed, remained in the Ballard family until it was abolished by the French Revolution, more than two hundred years later; and the types of Le Bé, printing both notes and lines at once, purchased by Pierre Ballard in 1540 for fifty thousand livres, were still in use in 1750. One cannot help suspecting that these types, excellent as they must have been, grew old-fashioned long before they were laid aside. But monopoly has its uses. There was no one to compete on equal terms with the distinguished and influential Ballards; so there was no use to them in making expensive changes in type.

For more than two centuries, then, the Ballard family held an important place as printers of music in France. The famous Orlando di Lasso visited them; Lully’s operas were printed by them, first from movable types, later from copper plates. In the early days of the firm Leroy himself wrote an instruction book for the lute, which was translated into English in two different versions--one by a writer named F. K. Gentleman. Leroy also wrote an instruction book for the 'guiterne’ (guitar) and a book of _airs de cour_ for the lute, in the dedication of which he said that such airs were formerly known as _voix de ville_. In England Thomas Tallis and his pupil, William Byrd, obtained in 1575 a monopoly for twenty years of all music printing done in the realm.

II

The invention of printing meant, as we have said, that music was no longer centralized about the church. Yet it has to be granted that one of the greatest impulses music has ever received came to it in the early sixteenth century from a new religion; an impulse which, destined to be checked for a while, though not killed, by the horrors of religious warfare in the next century, was to gain thereafter ever more and more strength and lead at last to truly magnificent heights in the work of Johann Sebastian Bach. The new religious movement to which we refer was the Protestant Reformation under the leadership of Martin Luther.

We have said consciously that music received thereby a new impulse. To hold that music was entirely reconstructed by Luther, that he discarded all the forms and technique of music that had been up to that time developed in the art, is quite as mistaken as to hold that he wholly discarded the Roman ritual and built up a new and independent service. The change which the Reformation brought to music was like the change it brought to the service, far more one of spirit than one of form. Luther’s reform was essentially to abolish the mediation of the priesthood, to clear from the service in so far as possible all that might stand between the worshipper and his God, to give freedom to the intimate personal communion between God and man which the northerner naturally feels and practises. In this respect Luther’s reform would theoretically restore all music in the service to the congregation. But Luther was dearly fond of music, of, so to speak, the best music. His favorite composers were Josquin des Prés and Ludwig Senfl, both contrapuntists of enormous skill. Their music was a worthy adornment of the service. 'I am not of the opinion,’ he said, 'that on account of the Gospel all the arts should be crushed out of existence as some over-religious people pretend; but I would willingly see all the arts, especially music, in the service of him who has created and given them.’ Congregational singing is anything but an art; often, indeed, is hardly music. Luther had no intention to dismiss trained choirs from the churches and give over all the music of the service to the untrained mass of worshippers. The trained choir therefore was retained in all the Lutheran churches, which could afford to pay for one, and music for these choirs--that is, artistic music, often music written by Catholic composers in complicated contrapuntal style--held an honored place in the Lutheran ritual.

The personal intimate spirit from which the reform drew life, however, found an expression in music. To the congregation was allotted a greater or less portion of song. It will be remembered that the early Christians sang together and that not until the seventh century was the privilege taken from them and restricted only to a trained choir. The German people, as a matter of fact, seem never to have quite given up their share in the musical part of the service. At some of the great festival services they joined in the _Kyrie_ and in the _Alleluia_, and very early it became the custom to insert German verses in the liturgy at these places. Thus there developed a literature of German hymns, sometimes partly German and partly Latin, as the following old Easter hymn, obviously interpolated in the _Kyrie_:

'Christ ist erstanden Von der Marter alle. Des sollen wir alle froh sein, Christ soll unser Trost sein, Kyrioleis.

Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah! Des sollen wir alle froh sein, Christ soll unser Trost sein, Kyrioleis.’

In connection with the mystery plays other hymns were written, such as the following cradle-song, part German, part Latin and part nonsense:

'In dulci jubilo Nun singet und sei froh. Unser’s Herzens Wonne Liegt in præsipio, Und leuchtet als die Sonne. Matris in gremio. Alpha et O. Alpha et O.’

About these hymns there was woven a sort of religious folk music. By the time of the Reformation there was a whole literature to draw from and Luther needed only to organize and standardize many of the hymns which had been familiar to the people for generations. To these he added others of his own writing. The music was drawn from all sources, practically none was especially composed. Luther had to aid him in compiling his hymn-book two famous musicians, Konrad Rupff and Johann Walther. In 1524 these two men were his guests for a period of three weeks. Köstlin[114] writes: 'While Walther and Rupff sat at the table bending over the music sheets with pen in hand, Father Luther walked up and down the room, trying on his fife to ally the melodies that flowed from his memory and his imagination with the poems he had discovered, until he had made the verse melody a rhythmically finished, well-rounded, strong, and compact whole.’ Here we have a picture of the German hymn-tune, later called the _chorale_, in the process of crystallization.

'The Devil does not need all the good tunes for himself,’ Luther wisely remarked, and he drew from all sources, secular and sacred, for his melodies. The same breadth of choice was likewise exercised by his followers throughout the century: a song sung by the footsoldiers at the battle of Pavia became the _Durch Adam’s Fall ist ganz verderbt_; the chorale melody _Von Gott will ich nicht lassen_, can be traced to an old love song, _Einmal tät ich Spazieren_; a love song, _Mein G’müt ist mir verwirret von einer Jungfrau zart_, by Hans Leo Hassler, became the choral melody to the funeral-hymn _Herzlich thut mich verlangen_, and later the same melody was set to Paul Gerhardt’s hymn, _O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden_, and in that form holds a leading part in Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. Nor were the chorale tunes taken from Germany alone. Favorite part-songs of Italy and France were appropriated and set to German words.

The hymn-book compiled by Luther with the help of Rupff and Walther was published in Wittenburg in 1524. It was intended for church use, and that the compilers had the choir, not the congregation, in mind is proved by the fact that all the tunes are contrapuntally set, with the melody as _cantus firmus_ in the tenor, that is to say, in the middle of the music, not soaring triumphantly aloft majestically to guide the congregation. We have, therefore, in these chorales of Luther not a new form but a new spirit. How great a part the congregation ever actually took in them is open to discussion. Doubtless in those churches where there was no skilled choir, congregational singing played an important rôle; but it seems likely that in those churches where there was such a choir, congregational singing was kept as much in the background as possible. In 1586 Lukas Osiander published a set of fifty chorales, 'set contrapuntally in such a way that the whole Christian congregation can always join in them.’ This was obviously a kind attempt to bring the more or less neglected congregation into the musical part of the service. In Osiander’s arrangements the melody is in the soprano. But the setting is still too intricate for general use and the same rather condescending, yet still lofty, attitude toward the congregation is characteristic of all composers down to the time of Bach.

The question of just how the congregation sang those chorales allotted to them is also in doubt. It is hardly possible that in the first half of the sixteenth century the organ accompanied them. The organ was still far too imperfect to attempt polyphonic playing such as would afford a harmonic support to the singers, who, we may presume, sang only in unison. It is more likely that the organ and the congregation alternated, or that the choir and the congregation sang in turn. Toward the end of the century attempts were made to have the choir lead the congregation, and then later, in the course of time, the organ was perfected and was used for accompaniment, coming soon to drown out the choir, which had little chance to maintain a leadership over the mass of singers on the one hand and the organ on the other. Thus the organ finally took the leadership. In its new position it no longer alternated with the congregation, and the skill which organists had had an opportunity to show in the solo passages, alternating, in the old days, with the congregation, was now concentrated upon the prelude. In this way the foundation for a characteristically German art-form in organ music, the _chorale-prelude_, was laid.

Though Luther was too much of a musician to be willing to give over the music of the service to be mishandled by a crowd of untrained singers, he none the less intended his chorale melodies to enter into the lives of the German Protestants. Thus, while, on the one hand, we have Luther’s own book and subsequent books in the same contrapuntal style, on the other, we have hymn-books in which only the melody was written and which carried the noble old tunes to every hearth and home throughout Protestant Germany. The first 'house’ hymn-book appeared a short while before Luther’s church book. It was compiled by Luther’s friend, Justus Jonas, and was called the _Erfurt Enchiridion_. Among the hymns contained in it were two old Latin hymns, already mentioned in Chapter V, the _Veni redemptor gentium_, by St. Ambrose, and the _Media in vita_, by Notker Balbulus, both, of course, done into German. An interesting collection was published in Frankfurt in 1571 with the preface: 'Street songs, cavalier songs, and mountain songs transformed into Christian and moral songs, for the abolishing, in the course of time, of the bad and vexatious practice of singing idle and shameful songs in the streets, in fields, and at home, by substituting for them good sacred and honest words.’ The chorale melodies, indeed, became the property of the Germans. They were colored with the sentiment of a whole race; they took on a nobility and a dignity, they seemed to germinate new life, and, finally, they became the glory of a lofty art, based on the skill of the Netherlanders, modified and adorned according to a new style soon to be perfected by the Italians, and infused with rich, warm life flowing from the very hearts of the German people.

The Protestant Reformation did not, then, at once alter the form of church music in Germany. Other influences, sprung from Catholic Italy, were to be far more powerful in that respect. Even the tendency toward harmonic writing, toward emphasizing the progression of chords rather than the interweaving of melodies, which the chorale melodies undoubtedly furthered, was a tendency very evident in Italian church music of the time, notably at Venice, was indeed a mark of the time. The true significance of the Lutheran reform in the history of music is that it laid music open to a flood of genuine strong feeling, personal, intimate, intensely human feeling, which little by little during the next two centuries, in spite of the horror and agony of persecution and warfare, permeated every vein and artery of music, and filled them with vital warmth and glowing color. During the Thirty Years’ War only the hymn and the chorale melody escaped destruction in Germany, and these survived because they were actually a part of the people and could cease to exist only when the race had been stamped out.

In France and in England the Protestant movement had far less influence upon music than in Germany. In France this seems to be explained by the fact that the French had not, like the Germans, a literature of native hymns, but had to construct their hymn-book from the Psalter, and that they had a more slender stock of genuine folk-song to draw upon. Zwingli, the leader of the Swiss Reformation, which was to win the support of the Frenchman Calvin, was not in favor of music, and his followers were ruthless in their destruction of organs and collections of music. Calvin, on the other hand, had in regard to music more the point of view of Luther. He drew freely from the Lutheran hymn-books both melodies and words, but especially in favor of metrical versions of the Psalms. These were set to music often excellent and finely harmonized. Among the Calvinistic psalm writers Clement Marot is most famous. It was he who, as court poet to Francis I, made several versions of the Psalms into the style of ballads, which won great popularity by their novelty and were set to gay tunes and sung by the people at court. Subsequently, in forced exile at Geneva, he added nineteen more to the collection of thirty he had already written, and these were later supplemented and arranged in final form by Theodore de Beza. Most conspicuous among the musicians connected with the movement in France were Loys Bourgeois and Claude Goudimel. The latter may have been a Netherlander and a pupil of Josquin. He was killed in the massacre of St. Bartholomew in Lyons (1572). Bourgeois composed many melodies himself to the Calvinistic hymns and set them more or less simply in four parts. Goudimel, on the other hand, composed elaborate settings in the style of motets with the melody, seldom his own, in the tenor.

The English, like the French, relied upon metrical versions of the Psalms for their hymn-books. Furthermore, the beginning of the Reformation in England was complicated with political motives and the movement was, for a long time, simply a break from the Church of Rome rather than an outburst of religious convictions. Yet after the suppression of monasteries between 1536 and 1540 there was something of the same destruction of organs and music which had wrought such havoc in Switzerland, and a general condemnation of elaborate church service. The first attempt at hymn tunes was the _Goostlie Psalmes_ of Coverdale, drawn largely from Lutheran sources. Under Edward VI (1547-1553) began the organization of the Anglican Church and the drafting of liturgies in English. The movement was checked by the reign of Mary, but under Elizabeth resulted in a standard ritual which called forth the best musical genius of the country. An elaborate setting of the canticles, etc., used in morning and evening prayer was encouraged and a new art-form, the musical flower of the English Reformation, the anthem, resulted from the setting of the variable portions of these services.

III

The great spirit of the Italian Renaissance, which was essentially a spirit of freedom and joy in individuality, thus took shape in Germany, England, and France, and laid a hand upon music as it had already done in Italy. On every hand it scatters its seeds, which will take root and later flower. Elements of form and design, rich chromatic alterations of harmony, splendid dramatic effects of answering double choirs are woven into the intricate web of Netherland polyphonic music, touching it with color and fire, making it fertile with new and vast developments. But all is gradual; the art grows slowly and only slowly changes. Amid the turbulent restlessness, the experiment and daring, the old ideal, the ideal of the monasteries and the great cathedrals, still awaits perfection--the touch of Lassus and of Palestrina.

We have seen that Petrucci’s first publication of 1501 contained ninety-six pieces, most of which were by Okeghem, Hobrecht, Josquin, Isaak, and others, such as Ghiselin, La Rue, Alex. Agricola, Brumel, Craen, by far the most part Netherlanders. This was in Venice. We need no further evidence of the popularity of the Netherland art in Italy. The Netherland style had become by this time the standard style of Europe; and during the first quarter of the sixteenth century Netherlanders still held sway over the development of music. There were pupils of Josquin in the Netherlands, in France, in Spain, in Italy, and in Germany. His music flowed over the face of Europe and his art penetrated to all the courts and into all the cathedrals. And upon all his pupils the spirit of the Renaissance was at work. Thousands of madrigals, of love songs, drinking songs, and hunting songs came crowding from their pens and jostled masses and motets in confusion. Program music was in the air, songs of battle, songs of gossiping women, of birds, of shepherds and of shepherdesses. It is hardly surprising that music for the church began to take on colors more and more brilliant. It is more surprising that the old ideal of exalted polyphony still endured and still called men to its standard.

Some of the pupils of Josquin are worthy of separate mention. Perhaps the most distinguished of them was Nicolas Gombert. He was a Netherlander by birth. We find him in the service of the sovereign of the Netherlands, later in the royal chapel at Brussels. In 1530 he was master of the boys at the imperial chapel in Madrid, and afterward probably first master in the same chapel. In 1556 he was back in his own country again, where, a few years after, he died. A large number of his works, from special editions of the sixteenth century, have come down to us, and some of his manuscripts, like so many other treasures of this period, are in the Munich library. His work for the church is characterized by a gentle, harmonious beauty, and Fétis called him the predecessor of Palestrina, especially on account of a beautiful _Pater noster_, which is marked by a lofty religious sentiment. He was very successful as a composer of motets, and, in his secular works, showed a tendency toward tone-color effects--program music--especially in his chansons, _Le berger et la bergère_, and _Le chant des oiseaux_.

Benedictus Ducis, another Netherlander and pupil of Josquin, born at Bruges in 1480, was distinguished by the musical brotherhood of Antwerp by being elected Prince of the Guild--the highest honor an artist could achieve at that time in the Netherlands. Leaving Antwerp in 1515 he appears to have visited Henry the Eighth of England, and later to have been in Germany. There is some difficulty in distinguishing the works of Ducis from those of Benedictus Appenzelder, owing to the peculiar custom of the time of signing manuscripts only with the Christian name. It is generally conceded, however, that Ducis composed a funeral ode on the death of his master Josquin, also a motet for eight parts, _Peccantem me quotidie_, passion music and settings of the Psalms, the earnestness and nobility of which justify his fame.

Jean Mouton, another pupil, was born probably near Metz, in Lorraine, became chapel singer to Louis XII and Francis I of France, then canon of Thérouanne and afterward of St. Quentin. His works show him to be a master of counterpoint and a worthy pupil of Josquin. Petrucci printed five of his masses in 1508, and later more than twenty of his motets; and Attaignant included his compositions in the third book of a famous collection of masses published in 1532, and also in a collection of motets which appeared somewhat earlier. A few masses in manuscript are in the Munich library. A large number of his motets have been preserved, justly valued for their artistic and effective qualities, which in some instances closely resemble those of his master. His pupil, Adrian Willaert, was one of the most gifted and one of the most influential composers of the next generation. He may be regarded as the founder of the Venetian school of composers, who played such a brilliant part in the history of music during the sixteenth century, who were experimenters and innovators, whose energy opened many a new channel to the course of music. The influence of Josquin thus passed to Venice.

Adrian Willaert, born probably in 1490 at Roulers, in Belgium, first studied law in Paris. Afterward he adopted music as his profession and became a pupil of Jean Mouton. In 1516 we find him travelling in Italy, visiting Rome, Venice, and Ferrara. There is a story to the effect that in Rome he heard a motet of his, the _Verbum dulce et suave_, sung by the papal choir, whose members believed it to have been written by Josquin; and that they refused to sing it again when they discovered it to be by an unknown composer. If this story be true, it may be added here that Willaert lived to see the day when his compositions were considered entirely worthy of attention, even from the most distinguished body of singers in Christendom.

That time was not yet come, however. Willaert left Italy, taking service as chapel master to King Ludwig II, ruler of Hungary and Bavaria; but in 1526 he was back again in Venice, where, in the following year, he received the appointment as first chapel master of the Basilica of St. Mark, at a salary of seventy ducats, about one hundred and sixty dollars. This was later increased to two hundred ducats, about four hundred and sixty dollars, which was considered a princely income. For thirty-five years the master kept at his post, although twice during that time, once in 1542 and again in 1556, a longing for his native country drew him back to Belgium. It was his hope, indeed, to spend his last years in Bruges; but he had taken root too firmly in Italy. Friends, admirers, and patrons urged him to remain in Venice, and it was there, in 1562, that he died.

The Basilica of St. Mark was already ancient when Willaert came to Venice. Founded in 830 to receive the relics of the second Evangelist brought from Alexandria, rebuilt a hundred and fifty years later, it had received its permanent form about the middle of the eleventh century. Five hundred years had but increased its beauty and added mellowness and historic interest to its charm. Externally, its domes and pinnacles, its encrusted marbles and pillars, its bronze horses and many-colored arches constitute a unique and splendid monument of history. Within its walls, statues, columns crowned with capitals from Greece and Byzantium, and rich mosaics blend in a beauty at once impressive and magnificent. The interior is not large, two hundred and five by one hundred and sixty-four feet; but it is particularly well adapted to the use of the two organs, which are placed opposite each other.

This circumstance suggested to Willaert the device of dividing his choir so as to contrast the mass effect of the united voices with antiphonal singing. With this device, happily carried into effect, there developed in time, under Willaert’s hands, a new style of composition for two choirs. It was this style which continued in vogue for more than a century and formed the standard and became the peculiar characteristic of the Venetian school.

In his early experiments with the divided choir Willaert made use of the Psalms, whose poetical form, with the parallel half-verses and refrains, seemed especially adapted to antiphonal rendering. Following these, he composed hymns and masses, not after the manner of the eight or ten-part compositions known in the Netherlands, but works specially adapted to the double choir, each part complete in itself, each combining with or opposing the other, and yet creating an impression of unity and centralization. This was actually a new artistic creation, and by reason of it Willaert became almost the idol of the Venetians. They called his lovely music 'liquid gold,’ adapted his name to 'Messer Adriano,’ honored him with verses and public addresses, and, in his old age, besought him to leave his ashes to the city in which his artistic triumphs had been achieved.

Willaert’s experiments with double choir effects had a profound and lasting influence upon the development of music. In the first place, owing to this, devices of imitation and canonic progression which had so long been the most prominent feature of ecclesiastical and secular music, became secondary in importance to chord progressions. The reason is obvious. To get the best effect with two answering choirs the sections which each sings must not be long and complicated, but relatively short and clear cut, otherwise the effect of balance or of echo is lost; and in these relatively short sections there is hardly time to accomplish elaborate polyphonic development. Even if there were, the polyphonic effects are far too subtle to be easily recognized in echo or answer. The tendency in writing music for two choirs was therefore toward a simple style, clearly balanced, with certain definite harmonic relationships which could not fail to be recognized when repeated. The composers of the Venetian school were almost within reach of the harmonic idea of music, which rose clearly to supremacy only late in the next century. They were actually breaking away from the ecclesiastical modes, not only by thus trying to write in a simple harmonic style, which was founded nearly on our ideas of tonic and dominant, but also by enriching their harmonies with chromatic variations. Willaert thus stands out as one of the founders of what has been called the coloristic or chromatic school of the sixteenth century. In his music, and even more in the music of his followers, the old modes are constantly altered and with them the practice of _musica ficta_, already mentioned, reaches its height.[115] It meant the crumbling of the model system. It must not, however, be supposed that Willaert abandoned entirely the traditions of the Netherlanders and that he gave up writing in the complicated style altogether. He, indeed, employed imitation and canon, but more casually; often only at the entrance of short alternating sections. His voice parts then proceeded in 'solid chord pillars,’ as Naumann has happily said, in a style markedly in advance of the old contrapuntal conceptions. In him therefore we have a brilliant example of the old style worked upon by new impulses, by the spirit of the Renaissance, the desire for rich color and varied, beautiful form.

Willaert was an industrious composer, and his works go far toward making the period from 1450 to 1550 'the golden century of the Netherlands.’ Masses, motets, psalms and hymns, madrigals and _canzone_ are all well-represented. One unusual composition, for five voices, in the form of a narrative based on the Bible story Susannah, seems like an early prophecy of the sacred cantata, although the treatment is severely hymnlike and not dramatic. As a writer of madrigals and of _frottole_ Willaert’s position is discussed in another chapter; though it may be said in passing that in these, as in his sacred music, his individuality is marked, and his knowledge and musical skill evident.

Though a northerner by birth, Willaert became the founder of a school characteristically Italian, and his work seemed, to his contemporaries, to embody the very spirit of Venetian life, in its richness and variety. He brought to the Italians the inheritance of the Netherland art, turned it into new and interesting channels, and revealed to later masters what possibilities of color lay hidden under the strictness of its laws.

Upon the death of Willaert, his pupil, Cipriano di Rore,[116] was appointed to the high office at St. Mark’s. Works of di Rore, including madrigals, motets, masses, psalms, and a Passion according to St. John, were held in high esteem by his contemporaries, especially in Munich, where they were frequently performed under the direction of Lassus. Duke Albert of Bavaria caused a handsome copy of a collection of his church compositions, graced by a portrait of the composer, to be placed in the Munich library, where it still remains.

Following di Rore at St. Mark’s came Gioseffo Zarlino,[117] a member of the order of Franciscan monks, also a pupil of Willaert, and a theorist of great importance. Few of his compositions have survived, but his theoretical writing, _Instituzioni harmoniche_, _Dimostrazioni harmoniche_, and _Sopplimenti musicali_, remain in an edition of Zarlino’s collected works published in four volumes in 1589. There are also in manuscript French, German, and Dutch translations of the _Instituzioni_, which contain, besides an important discussion of the third, and the major and minor consonant triad, a clear explanation of double counterpoint in the octave, twelfth, and in contrary motion; of canon and double canon in the unison, octave, and upper and under fifth, with numerous examples based upon the same _cantus firmus_. Baldasarro Donati and Giovanni della Croce, both distinguished musicians, in turn succeeded Zarlino as _maestro di capella_ at St. Mark’s.

Elsewhere in Italy important composers appear, native Italians who bring to the Netherland art the Italian gift of melody and sweetness. Constanzo Festa,[118] a Florentine, occupies an especially important place. Riemann says of him, 'He can be looked upon as the predecessor of Palestrina, with whose style his own has many points of similarity. He was the first Italian contrapuntist of importance, and gives a foretaste of the beauties which were to spring from the union of Netherland art with Italian feeling for euphony and melody.’ Constanzo Porta, a pupil of Willaert, was successively _maestro_ of the Franciscan monastery at Padua, and of churches at Ravenna, Osimo, and Loreto. Gafori (or Gafurius, 1451-1522), cantor and master of the boys at Milan cathedral, left many theoretical writings of great value. Arcadelt, already mentioned as a writer of madrigals, composed a volume of masses, published both in Venice and by Ballard and Leroy in Paris in 1557. Jacob Clemens, better known by the name of Clemens non Papa, to distinguish him from the pope--a fact which attests, in a jocular way, his popularity--was a Netherlander, and one of the most famous composers of the epoch between Josquin and Palestrina, leaving to posterity a large number of masses, motets, and chansons, besides four books of hymns and psalms, the melodies of which were taken from Netherland folk song.

Meantime in Germany we find also musicians of distinction, though as yet none of the very first rank. One of the oldest of these was Adam von Fulda, a learned monk, known both as a composer and theorist, and the author of at least one highly esteemed motet, _O vera lux et gloria_. Heinrich Finck, Thomas Stolzer, Ludwig Senfl, and Heinrich Isaak all deserve an honorable place in the history of German music of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Isaak, though for some time considered a German, was born in the Netherlands, probably about 1450, and was one of the most learned of the contemporaries of Josquin. He lived for a time in Ferrara, afterward becoming organist at the court of Lorenzo the Magnificent. From this post he went to Rome, and finally entered the service of the Emperor Maximilian I at Vienna. Petrucci printed five of his masses in 1506, and included many of his other compositions in collections published early in the century. Manuscript works are in the Munich, Brussels, and Vienna libraries. His part songs were considered models of their kind, and are not lacking in interest even to-day. It is to Isaak we are indebted for the lovely _Inspruck, ich muss dich lassen_, used as a hymn by the followers of Luther, and by Sebastian Bach in the St. Matthew Passion.

Ludwig Senfl (born 1492, died about 1555), a pupil and the successor of Isaak at the court chapel of Maximilian I at Vienna, was later chapel-master at Munich. According to Riemann, Senfl was one of the most distinguished, if not the most important, of the German contrapuntists of the sixteenth century. He is further remembered as a friend of Luther. A great number of his compositions are preserved, among them being masses, motets, odes, songs, and hymns for congregational singing.

The work of the brilliant Clement Jannequin in Paris was largely secular and will be treated in another chapter. It may be remarked in passing that types of composition perfected by him were to have great influence upon instrumental music before the end of the century. In England John Merbecke (d. 1585), Christopher Tye (d. 1572), Thomas Tallis (d. 1585), and William Byrd (d. 1623) match the Netherlands in skill and bring to their music not only the spirit of the new age, but the peculiar melodiousness which has always characterized English music. The works of Tallis became great favorites and in the famous English collections of music for the virginals toward the end of the century several of his vocal works appeared as transcriptions. Byrd must be ranked as one of the most daring composers of the time. Though he conformed to the new religion he remained at heart a Catholic, and his great works are akin to those of the greatest Catholic composers on the continent. He has, indeed, been called the Lassus of England. Here, too, must be mentioned, though belonging almost more to the next century, Thomas Morley (d. 1602), John Dowland (d. 1626), and perhaps the greatest of all English composers except Henry Purcell, Orlando Gibbons (d. 1625). All these men were composing at the end of the century, especially madrigals and other secular forms famous not only for their great technical skill, but for their remarkable sweetness and expressiveness. They were all, moreover, skillful instrumentalists and brought music for the harpsichord to a state far advanced beyond anything on the continent. John Bull (d. 1628) was not only a master of the art of counterpoint but a virtuoso on both organ and harpsichord, whose match could be found only in Andrea and Giovanni Gabrielli in Venice.

Everywhere the Renaissance spirit was at work, but prosperous Venice stands out clearly as the centre of the new movement which so colored and remodelled music. Effects of double choirs, chromatic harmonies, tendencies toward definiteness of form, and even the combination of voices and instruments within the church itself, all marks of the changes which were affecting the development of music, all signs of the liberation of music from the sway of the church and of its closer relationship with passionate active life, are first found in the works of the composers who were connected with St. Mark’s cathedral. But these men were really pioneers and the results of their innovations, though radical and far-reaching, were hardly foreseen. They sowed seeds, so to speak, which were to grow and flower long after their death. We have now to consider how the art of the Netherlanders grew to a present perfection in the works of two men--Orlando di Lasso and Pierluigi da Palestrina--both of whom, but particularly the latter, pursued an ideal untouched by the modern forces playing upon music about them; an ideal which, moreover, they attained and by attaining brought to an end the first great period in the history of European music.

IV

Orlando di Lasso[119] was born in the town of Mons, in Hainault, probably in 1530. The Flemish form of the name, Roland de Lattre, seems to have been abandoned early in favor of the Italian. The fate of the musically gifted boy, both during and long after the Middle Ages, was a choir school; and accordingly Orlando was entered as chorister in the local church of St. Nicholas. A writer named Van Quickelberg, giving an account of Lasso in 1565, says that he quickly came to a good understanding of music, and that the beauty of his voice caused him to be twice stolen from the school in which he lived with the other choristers. Twice also his 'good parents’ rescued him; but, finally (at the age of twelve), he became attached to the suite of Ferdinand of Gonzaga, Viceroy of Sicily, with whom he travelled to Italy. Orlando stayed for some time in Naples, Rome, and Milan, continuing his studies, and then seems to have undertaken a long journey through France and England. By the year 1555 he was settled in Antwerp and rather widely known as a composer. Two years later Albert V, duke of Bavaria, called him to serve as chamber musician at his court in Munich. Duke Albert was a liberal man, a connoisseur of art, and, oddly enough, a man of some fame both in the athletic and in the religious world. He founded the famous royal library of Munich, to which we have had frequent occasion to refer, and enriched it during his lifetime with many valuable manuscripts and objects of art.

At first Lasso, being unfamiliar with the German language, filled rather a subordinate position among the duke’s musicians; but in 1562 he was appointed master of the chapel, which included both the choir and an orchestra. From this year on, up to the time when the illness attacked him which resulted in his death, his career was one of ever-increasing success and prosperity. He was called the 'Prince of Musicians.’ In 1570 he was ennobled by the Emperor Maximilian II, and in the year following Pope Gregory XIII decorated him with the Order of the Golden Spur. On visiting Paris he was received with great favor by King Charles IX; while at home Duke Albert assured him his salary for life and appointed three of his sons to honorable positions in the chapel. The successor of Albert, Duke Wilhelm II, not only confirmed Lasso in his position, but presented him, in appreciation of his services, with a house and garden, and also made suitable provision for his wife. Neither the favor of royalty nor the admiration of princes, however, could render him immune to ill fortune. His last few years were clouded by mental trouble and melancholia. In June, 1594, he died, and was buried in the cemetery of the Franciscans. The monastery has been destroyed, but the monument to Lasso was preserved and now stands in the garden of the Academy of Fine Art in Munich.

Although the name of Lasso is not so well known to the world to-day as that of Palestrina, his career was a remarkable one. In the oft-mentioned Munich library, among other works of the master, is a manuscript copy of his most famous work, the 'Penitential Psalms,’ written between 1562 and 1565, but not published until some time later. At the performance of these psalms Duke Albert was so impressed and affected that he caused a manuscript copy to be made and placed in his library. It was richly ornamented by the court painter, Hans Mielich, and other artists, and magnificently bound in leather.[120] Duke Albert was perhaps an exceptional patron; but, granting that to be the case, Lasso’s career shows how honorable was the position held by a great musician in his century.

In the duke’s chapel were upward of ninety singers and players, several of them composers of merit, all of them musicians of ability. The choir singing was well balanced, and correct in pitch, even through the longest compositions. The general order of the ducal service was for the wind and brass instruments of the orchestra to accompany the mass on Sundays, and festival days, and, on the occasion of a banquet, to play during the earlier courses of the dinner. The strings, under Morari as conductor, then enlivened the remainder of the feast until the dessert, when Lasso and his choir of picked voices would finish the entertainment with quartets, trios, or pieces for the full choir. For chamber music, all the instruments would combine. The duke and his family were keenly interested in Lasso’s work, passionately fond of music in itself and proud of the celebrity of their chapel master. It is one of the instances where reverence and appreciation came to the artist during his lifetime; and it is not to be doubted that these fortunate circumstances had a tremendous influence on the master’s work. His industry and fertility were prodigious. Compositions amounting to two thousand or more are accredited to him--masses, motets, magnificats, passion music, frottole, chansons and psalms. There are two hundred and thirty madrigals alone. Following the lead of Willaert, he sometimes used the divided choir and composed for it, and also showed himself not indifferent to the growing taste for psalm singing.

The Seven Penitential Psalms, composed at the duke’s request, are for five voices, some numbers with two separate movements for each verse, the final movement, _Sic erat_, for six voices. Each psalm is a composition of some length, though modern ideas as to their tempi, and therefore as to the time required for their performance, show considerable variation. 'It is not true that Lasso composed the Penitential Psalms to soothe the remorse of Charles IX, after the massacre of St. Bartholomew, but it is more than probable that they were sung before that unhappy monarch, and his musical sense must indeed have been dull, if he found no consolation and hope expressed in them. This is no everyday music, which may charm at all seasons, or in all moods; but there are times when we find ourselves forgetting the antique forms of expression, passing the strange combinations of sounds, almost losing ourselves in a new-found grave delight, till the last few moments of the psalm--always of a more vigorous character--gradually recall us as from a beautiful dream which “waking we can scarce remember”.... So unobtrusive is its character that we can fancy the worshippers hearing it by the hour, passive rather than active listeners, with no thought of the human mind that fashioned its form. Yet the art is there, for there is no monotony in the sequence of the movements. Every variety that can be naturally obtained by changes of key, contrasted effects of repose and activity, or distribution of voices, are here; but these changes are so quietly and naturally introduced, and the startling contrasts now called “dramatic” so entirely avoided, that the composer’s part seems only to have been to deliver faithfully a divine message, without attracting notice to himself.’[121]

De Lasso’s secular compositions are placed by critics almost unanimously even above his ecclesiastical work. The madrigals and chansons reveal force and variety of treatment, bold experiments with chromatics, a freer modulation and a keen sympathy for the popular elements of music. 'Lasso shed lustre on, and at the same time closed, the great epoch of the Belgian ascendancy, which, during the space of two hundred years, had given to the world nearly three hundred musicians of marvellous science.’[122] The decline and fall of the Netherland school, which began with the death of its last great master, Lasso, are ascribed by Fétis to the political disturbances and wars of the sixteenth and succeeding centuries. But it seems more probable that the intricacies of the contrapuntal art created a desire for simpler methods. The genius of Italy and Germany, upon whose soil the last Netherland masters flourished, supplied the very qualities which brought the art to perfection.

V

It has already been related how, even as early as 1322, the liberties which careless, ignorant, or sacrilegious singers took with the Roman service had called forth denunciations from the papal chair. The genius of the Netherland schools, dominating church music as it did for a space of two hundred years, was, like Janus, two-faced. On the one hand, it developed a musical technique so complete and perfect in form that any further progress without an entire change of principle seemed impossible; and, on the other, it fostered a dry, mathematical correctness that led, at its worst, to an utter disregard of expression and feeling. Only the genius of a Josquin or a Lasso rendered learning subservient to beauty of expression and carried out the true mission of art.

In Rome, however, no master had yet appeared who was great enough to force into the background all the unsanctioned innovations by which unscrupulous musicians sought to reach the popular taste. From the time of the return of the popes from Avignon (1377) Roman church music had been a continual source of dissatisfaction to the Curia. As has been pointed out, the plain-chant became more and more overladen with contrapuntal embellishments; the mass sometimes exhibited a labored canon worked over a long, slow _cantus firmus_, the different voices singing different sets of words entirely unconnected with each other. Sometimes, again, the ritual was enlivened by texts beginning with the words _Baisez moy; Adieu, mes amours_; or the much tortured _Omme armé_, of which the tunes were as worldly as the text. If these objections were lacking, another was likely to be present in the absurdly elaborate style, which rendered the words of so little importance that they might as well not have existed at all. The mass, 'bristling with inept and distracting artifices,’ had lost all relation to the service it was supposed to illustrate. 'It was usual for the most solemn phrases of the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, or Agnus Dei to blend along the aisles of the basilica with the unedifying refrains of the lewd chansons of Flanders and Provence.’[123] In this manner the beautiful ritual was either degraded by pedants into a mere learned conundrum, or by idlers into a sacrilegious and profane exercise; and the reproofs of popes and councils had, so far, not availed to keep out these signs of deterioration, much less to lift church music to the level of the sister arts.

In this situation the Council of Trent was forced to recognize the degradation of music and to take up the question of a thorough and complete reform. In 1564 Pope Pius IV authorized a commission of eight cardinals to carry out the resolution of the council, whose complaints were mainly upon the two points indicated above--first, the melodies of the _canti firmi_ were not only secular, but sung to secular words, while the other parts often sang something else; secondly, the style had become so excessively florid as to obscure the words, even when suitable, and render them of no account. Some of the members of the council, it is claimed, declared that it was better to forbid polyphony altogether than to suffer the existing abuses to continue. In the passionate desire for the purification of the ritual even Josquin’s works had been abandoned, not because of any lack of admiration for them, but because he shared necessarily in the general condemnation of all music not Gregorian. A modest and devoted composer, however, had already attracted the attention of two of the members of the pope’s commission, Cardinals Borromeo and Vitellozzi, and it was to him they now turned in their need.

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina was born in 1526[124] of humble parentage in Praeneste, or Palestrina, a town in the campagna four hours from Rome. Early in life he came to the Imperial city, studied with one of the excellent masters resident there, and then returned to his native town to become organist in the cathedral. In 1547 he married the daughter of a tradesman, by whom he had several children. In 1551 Pope Julius III called him to Rome as choirmaster of the St. Giulia Chapel at St. Peter’s, where he succeeded Arcadelt. Three years later, after the publication of a volume of masses, dedicated to the pope, Palestrina received an appointment as singer in the papal choir. He had a poor voice, he was a layman, and married. Each one of these reasons was sufficient, according to the constitution of the Roman College, to forbid his appointment, and Palestrina hesitated in his acceptance of the post. Not wishing, however, to offend his powerful patron, and naturally desirous of obtaining a permanent position, he resigned his office at the St. Giulia chapel and entered the pontifical choir. This appointment was supposed to be for life, and the young singer may well have felt discouraged when, after four years, a reforming pope, Paul IV, dismissed him with two other married men. In place of his salary as singer the pope awarded him a pension of six scudi (less than six dollars) a month. With a wife and family such a reduction of income seemed nothing less than ruin to Palestrina, and, stricken with nervous fever, he took to his bed. A little more courage, however, might have served him better; for his dismissal did not spell ruin. In two months he was invited to fill the post of choir master at the Lateran, and his fortunes again brightened. He was able to keep his pension, together with the salary accorded him in his new position. After six years he was transferred to the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore, where he remained for ten years, his monthly salary being about sixteen dollars. In 1571 he was reappointed to his old office of chapel master at the Vatican.

Palestrina was chapel master at the Santa Maria Maggiore at the time of the appointment of the commission for the reform of church music. The Cardinals Borromeo and Vitellozzi, both active members, recommended that one more trial be made to harmonize religious requirements with the better taste of the people. A story has prevailed for centuries that Palestrina was requested to write a mass which should serve as a model of what the music of the sacred office should be, and that he submitted three works, which were first performed with great care at the house of Cardinal Vitellozzi, before a group of clergy and singers. There was an immediate and enthusiastic verdict in favor of the compositions. The first two were good, and were sufficiently praised; but the third, the _Missa Papæ Marcelli_, as it was afterward called in honor of an earlier pope, was felt to be the epitome of all that was noble and dignified in ecclesiastical music, the crown and glory of the service itself. It was first sung in the papal chapel in 1565. In appreciation of the noble work, Palestrina was made official composer to the pontifical choir--a post created especially for him--and succeeding popes confirmed him in his office as long as he lived.

The story of the commission of cardinals and the musical reforms instituted by the Council of Trent has been so emphasized by some historians as to represent Palestrina as the 'savior’ without whose services church music would virtually have ceased to exist. Such a view, however, requires some modification. Church music was not 'saved’ by Palestrina in any such sense, though its debt to him is, nevertheless, almost inestimable. There was never any intention on the part of the cardinals to abolish it altogether from the church; but they had long been seeking a form and a style which should be intelligible, acceptable both to the devotee and the layman of cultivated musical taste, and suitable to the office which it holds in the sacred service. Ambros goes so far as to deny that there was any cause for such wholesale purification; but, in view of the facts cited, this is evidently an error. That the evil was widespread is proved by the action that provincial synods took, in following the example of the Council of Trent, Milan and Cambrai in 1565, Constance and Augsburg in 1567, Namur and Mechlin in 1570.

From the time of Josquin attempts had been made by one and another of the masters mentioned in this chapter to make a more suitable connection between text and melody, to simplify the contrapuntal writing, and to put expression into their art. To some extent, as has been seen, they accomplished their purpose. Josquin, Festa, Gombert, Morales, Rore, and especially Willaert and Lasso, have all left evidences of their noble endeavor in this direction. It was left to Palestrina, however, to achieve a high level of style, the excellence of which was reached by the other masters only in isolated instances; and to prove to the cardinals that the music of the church could be lifted to its true dignity. He differs, not in form, but in æsthetic principle, from his contemporaries; but it is precisely that difference which raised Palestrina to the pinnacle of fame.

The outward facts of his later life offer little that need detain the reader. Among his patrons were popes and princes, but they did not, on the whole, distinguish themselves by kindness or generosity to the musician. Jealousy among members of the choir with which he was so long connected was a constant source of unpleasantness, and his faithful work was meagrely rewarded. His largest regular earnings amounted to something like thirty dollars a month, and he apparently never dreamed of any revenue from the sale of his works. Indeed, it is unlikely that any very substantial reward ever came to him with his added honors as a composer. Neither could he have added much to his gains by teaching, for in the whole course of his life he taught but seven private pupils, three of whom were his own sons. Continuous poverty was accompanied by domestic griefs of the deepest kind. Three sons, all giving promise of inheriting the father’s intellect and genius, died one after another; the wife with whom he was especially happy died in 1580; and the one remaining son became a profligate and worthless spendthrift. It may be added that not long after the death of his first wife he married a wealthy widow and so was well provided for till the end of his life.

One event in the master’s life stands out in contrast to the general sadness. In 1575, the year of Jubilee, fifteen hundred singers, belonging to two confraternities of his native town, made a pilgrimage to Rome, and utilized the occasion to do him honor. Dividing themselves into three choruses, with priests, laymen, boys, and women among their number, and with Palestrina himself at their head, they entered Rome in a solemn and ceremonial procession, singing the music of their great townsman. This was perhaps the only public honor Palestrina received during his lifetime.

Among the friends of his later life were S. Filippo Neri, his confessor, a favorite pupil named Guidetti, Ippolito d’Este, and Giacomo Buoncompagni, a nephew of Pope Gregory XIII. The activity of his early years continued almost to the very end. The record of the second half of his life is but a long catalogue of his publications. Whole collections of magnificent works were dedicated to popes, cardinals, or princes, some of whom returned the honor with scant courtesy. The last of these was a collection of thirty _madrigali spirituali_ for five voices, in honor of the Virgin, dedicated to the grand-duchess of Tuscany, wife of Ferdinand de’ Medici. Baini and Dr. Burney are full of praises for these last productions. While he was eagerly at work on another volume--seven masses to be dedicated to Pope Clement VII--he was taken ill and died, February 2, 1594, comforted and cared for to the end, not by his mean and worthless son, but by his saintly friend, Filippo Neri. By order of the Curia he was buried with all the honor of a cardinal or prince in the Basilica of the Vatican, while the citizens of Rome, high and low, followed him in sorrow to his grave.

VI

The immense number of Palestrina’s works is astonishing even in that age of prodigious workers. The list appended to a prospectus of a proposed 'selected’ edition of his works mentions ninety-three masses, one hundred and nineteen motets, forty-five hymns, sixty-eight offertories, three volumes of Lamentations; of litanies three books, of Magnificats two books, of madrigals four books--all of which are but a portion of his labors. The mass for Holy Thursday, _Fratres ego enim accepi_, the mass for the assumption of the Virgin, _Assumpta est Maria in coelum_, the motet, _Surge illuminare Jerusalem_, and the _Stabat Mater_ for two choirs, are still in use in the papal chapel. The _Improperia_, (reproaches of the Lord to an ungrateful people), performed for the first time in 1560, immediately obtained a great renown, and were added at once by Pope Pius IV to the collection of the apostolic chapel. This work also has been repeated in the Sistine chapel yearly on Good Friday up to the present time. Its performance made a profound impression upon both Goethe and Mendelssohn. The latter thus describes the singing of the pontifical choristers in the rendition of this work: 'They understood how to bring out and place each delicate trait in the most favorable light, without giving it undue prominence; one chord gently melted into another. The ceremony, at the same time, is solemn and imposing; deep silence prevails in the chapel, only broken by the reëchoing “Holy,” sung with unvarying sweetness and expression.’

The _Missa Papæ Marcelli_, which proved so important an instrument in the history of church music, is written for six voices, soprano, alto, two tenors, and two basses. Immediately upon its production its popularity became very great. Cardinals quoted poetry in its praise; the pope commanded that a special performance be given in the apostolic chapel, and that it be transcribed into the chapel collection in unusually large characters. Baini compares its grandeur to that of Thirty-third Canto of the Inferno. Curious legends as to its origin sprang up, and unauthorized 'arrangements’ went through several editions. A poor adaptation for four voices was made by Anerio, and others for eight and twelve voices by other followers of the Roman school. It is perhaps the best known example of the celebrated Palestrina style.

In a classification of Palestrina’s work the German writer Hauptmann distinguishes three styles, corresponding generally to the master’s very early, adolescent, and mature years. The first shows markedly the influence of his Netherland predecessors and teachers. The melodies move along independently without 'melting into chords,’ and the predominating character is fugal and canonic. In this phase of his work he was still influenced by the 'evil fashion’ of the period, which for the most part subordinated the true meaning of the music to the display of contrapuntal science. This quality is shown occasionally, also, in later compositions, as, for example, in the mass with the well-worn _L’omme armé_ theme, wherein he boldly met the Flemish composers on their own ground and proved that he could write as learned counterpoint as they. In these examples he seems intentionally to have adopted the florid style of his predecessors, overlaying the theme with erudite contrapuntal figures, and rendering it elaborate and difficult.

The mass _Assumpta est Maria_ may be said to illustrate the second style, which is in marked contrast to his preceding work. The music is much less elaborate, the voices proceeding, for the most part, simultaneously in smoothly flowing phrases. The third, that known as the Palestrina style, illustrated so famously by the Pope Marcellus mass, is a combination of all that was best in the Netherland and Italian schools. It is a vocal style in simple counterpoint, mostly note against note, with only a moderate use of imitation, and an avoidance of chromatics, violent contrasts, and everything approaching the dramatic. At first he followed the custom of using secular tunes for sacred works; but in his best period he almost invariably employed the ancient plain-song melodies in connection with the proper sacred text. Many of his _canti firmi_ are placed in the soprano instead of in the tenor voice. Strict attention is shown to syllabic declamation, and to a simple, singable arrangement of the voice parts, which is frequently based upon a succession of pure triads. The harmony is gentle and serene, and the devices for obtaining contrasts and tone color are conspicuous by their absence; while the whole is imbued with sincerity, devotion, and a great sense of beauty. Thibaut, a Frenchman, says of him, 'He is so completely master of the ancient ecclesiastical modes, and of the treatment of the simple triad, that repose and enjoyment are to be found in his works in a greater degree than in those of any other master.’

Contrasts and similarities between the lives of di Lasso and Palestrina suggest themselves at once. The one a northerner, aristocratic, famous, successful, rich, welcomed in the most courtly and cultured circles of Europe, encouraged and richly rewarded in all his endeavors: the other a southerner, poor, burdened with sorrows and difficulties throughout his life, pursuing his calling without regard to favor or disfavor. Yet they were alike in their prodigious activity, in their lovable and gentle natures, and in their devotion to the Catholic Mother Church. Both were rich in genius--the northerner more emotional, more sensuous in harmony, more dramatic, the southerner more calm and serene in the beauty of his work. Palestrina seems to have stood apart, untouched both by the swarming intellectual novelties of the time, and by the revolutionary spirit within the church. Great of intellect indeed he must have been, for he conquered a vast field of learning, and reached a point where his art was objective, universal, and perfect according to its type.

With the death of Palestrina the first great period of what we may call modern music, in distinction from the music of the ancients, which was purely melodic, came practically to perfection which was an end. A few distinguished composers carried on for a while the traditions of the vocal polyphonic style, now perfect, chief among whom were Giovanni Nanino (d. 1607), Thomas Luis de Vittoria (d. _ca._ 1613), Felice Anerio (d. 1614), and Giovanni Anerio (d. _ca._ 1620), possibly the brother of Felice; but new and powerful influences were at work to turn men’s minds from this perfection and rapidly so to modify the style itself that the characteristics and the spirit of it vanished. It had grown up within the church, it was apt only to the expression of exalted religious rapture, and even before the century which brought about its flawless perfection the more passionate spirit of man was seeking to express itself. Such a spirit brought color and fire and dramatic vigor to music, even to music of the church such as we have seen in Venice; and such emotional force the exquisitely adjusted mechanism of polyphony was in no way suited to express. We must remember that it was essentially religious music and that pronounced rhythm and sharp dissonances were consciously avoided; furthermore, that at its best it was to be sung without accompaniment and that a conjunct, smooth movement of the voice parts was necessary since singers in choir without accompaniment cannot be sure to sing wide or unnatural intervals exactly. Since rhythm, dissonance, and sudden leaps or turns in melody are the chief means whereby music can express emotional agitation, the Palestrina style was not even remotely suitable to the new and active spirit spread abroad through the influence of the Italian Renaissance, which had discovered new worlds, new arts, new sciences, new life. The delicate and infinitely complicated structure could not but be rent and distorted. Luther with his chorales, the English with their new service and the coming of the Elizabethan age, even Willaert in catholic, rich Venice with his two organs and his double choirs had forecast the end of the Palestrina style.

Several features of this marvellous style were destined to disappear simply with the natural growth of music. In the first place the polyphonic ideal, in its highest, strictest sense--the submersion of many melodies in a river of sound in which no melody is evident, the complete suppression of individual personal utterance--was a mediæval and essentially intellectual ideal. It could not long maintain its hold against the inborn natural desire of the individual to sing out his own personal feelings. For it meant the suppression of melody, an unnatural restraint. In the second place, from the time when two melodies were first joined the knowledge and appreciation of harmony were bound to grow--that is, the knowledge of the effect of dissonances and consonances following each other, and it needed but a matter of time for men to come to plan music with the end of producing such effects in a definite sequence. Now in polyphony the consideration of the progression of chords was entirely secondary to the ideal of writing several independent voice parts. Of course the influence of the church modes was strong in delaying the development of the harmonic bases of music, they were iron bands about harmony and they quite fettered modulation, for it was forbidden to pass in the course of a piece from one mode to another. But here again the Palestrina style is related to the scholasticism of the Middle Ages. The ecclesiastical modes were in general closely connected with the philosophy of æsthetics, on the one hand, and with mathematics, on the other; and all the popular music which has been preserved from the Middle Ages shows an unmistakable and deeply significant choice of those modes only which resemble our own major and minor.

In the suppression of individual emotion, in the banishment of rhythm and other active startling elements of music in order to produce the effect of vagueness and mystery, in the limitation of music to ecclesiastical modes, the Palestrina style is the flower of the spirit of the Middle Ages, of a spirit that in the lifetime of Palestrina himself was already dissipating in thin air. He stands looking backward upon the centuries which had given him birth, while on every hand the activities of man were urging impetuously forward. To the new aims, therefore, we must now turn our attention.

F. B.

FOOTNOTES:

[114] _Luther als Vater des evangelischen Kirchenliedes._

[115] _Musica ficta_ is music in which the ecclesiastical modes, theoretically never to be altered, are freely varied by chromatics, that is to say, in which the diatonic or natural notes of the modes are raised and lowered by sharps and flats, either to enrich the harmony or to facilitate the _leading_ of the voice parts. The instinct so to alter notes that they may glide or lead, so to speak, into certain chords is almost fundamental. The same instinct was equally powerful in another direction in forming scales even among semi-civilized races, only in scales, which are _melodic_ formulæ, the instinct is to glide downward to a final note, as, for instance, in the Dorian tetrachord of the Greeks, whereas in harmonic music the instinct is to glide upward. The so-called _leading tone_ in our scale is the result of harmonic instinct, and its final establishment in the scale is certainly heralded in _musica ficta_. A comparison of the so-called natural and harmonic minor scales in our own system will, perhaps, make the matter clear to the reader lacking technical knowledge. The natural A-minor scale comprises on the keyboard the white notes from A to a. In the harmonic minor, that is to say, in the minor scale so altered as to be suitable for the purposes of harmony, the G is raised a half tone by a sharp and therefore _leads_ irresistibly to the A above it. This sharping of the G augments the natural interval from F to G, and, since this augmented interval is hard to sing, the F, too, is sometimes sharped, and the scale then becomes what we call the melodic minor. Nothing could be more indicative than this 'melodic’ compromise of the power harmony has exercised over the development of music, for rather than do without the _leading_ tone, which is itself an alteration of the natural scale, we alter the scale still further. Our melodic minor scale is therefore constructed to square with the harmonic need, a queer paradox. Before harmony came to influence composers the true melodic alteration of this scale of white notes between A and a would have been the flatting or lowering of the B, so that the melody might attain its most natural end on the lowest note of the scale by a gliding half-step. It should be noted that relatively few indications of chromatic alterations in _musica ficta_ were written in the score. Singers were given a special training to enable them to recognize when such alterations were necessary, and to alter correctly. Thus in connection with _musica ficta_ elaborate rules were formulated which are not distantly removed from our own rules of harmony.

[116] _Cf._ Chap. IX, p. 275.

[117] Born 1517 at Chioggia, in Venetia; died 1590 at Venice.

[118] _Cf._ Chap. IX, p. 274.

[119] Also called Orlandus de Lassus.

[120] This work contains the portrait which we reproduce herewith, and which, taken in connection with its setting and the history of the man, is of uncommon interest.

[121] J. R. Sterndale-Bennett, in Grove’s Dictionary.

[122] Kiesewetter: _Musikgeschichte_.

[123] Grove: Article on 'Palestrina.’

[124] Riemann: _Handbuch der Musikgeschichte_, II¹.