CHAPTER XIII

THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

The musicians of the century--Henry Purcell and music in England--Italy: Alessandro Scarlatti; Arcangelo Corelli; Domenico Scarlatti--The beginnings of French opera: the _Ballet-comique de la reine_; Cambert and Perrin--Jean Baptiste Lully--Couperin and Rameau--Music in Germany: Keiser, Mattheson, and the Hamburg opera; precursors of Bach.

Three-quarters of the seventeenth century produced hardly more than experimental music. The enthusiasm of the Italians found on every hand new ways for the development of music and they were in every branch the innovators and the bold discoverers. In every country of Europe their influence was felt, their guidance followed. They were the models for the time. And, at the end of the century, what they had sown bore fruit, both in their own country and in England, Holland, Germany, and France. At the end of the century lasting achievement takes the place of experiment, there are a dozen composers in every branch of music who no longer speak with hesitation but with certainty, whose music is well built and clear and free in style. Their activities pass well into the next century, but they are firmly rooted in the seventeenth, and their work should be regarded as the harvest of that time of sowing. Growing among them were the greatest of all composers, John Sebastian Bach, and his great compeer Georg Friedrich Handel.

I

England alone produced a truly great composer whose lifetime fell within the century, Henry Purcell.

Corelli and Scarlatti must both be given an important place in the history of music. Of the two men, Scarlatti had the greater genius, but he turned it to use in a form of music which could not develop beyond where he left it, which was radically false and destined to oblivion. Corelli, on the other hand, composing far less, gave violin music the secure foundation upon which all later musicians have built, and left examples of simple instrumental music which still hold their place by force of their calm, genuine feeling. It is strange to think of Corelli on tour in Naples some two hundred years ago, sitting nervous and confused at the head of Scarlatti’s orchestra, stupidly making mistakes; and of Scarlatti, then at the pinnacle of fame, polite and kind.

Alessandro Scarlatti’s son, Domenico, was born in Naples in 1685, during the second year of his father’s stay there. With whom he studied is unknown, but in his youth he was both in Naples and Rome. His first work was in Naples. In 1705 his father sent him to Venice with the great singer Nicolino, and gave him a letter to Ferdinand de Medici in Florence in which he wrote: 'This son of mine is an eagle whose wings are grown; he ought not to stay idle in the nest, and I ought not to hinder his flight.... Under the sole escort of his own artistic ability he sets forth to meet whatever opportunities may present themselves for making himself known--opportunities for which it is hopeless to wait in Rome nowadays.’

In 1708 Handel came to Venice and the two men seem to have gone to Rome together for a competition on harpsichord and organ before Cardinal Ottoboni, the generous patron of Corelli. At any rate, the competition took place and Handel was judged the better organist, while the victory for harpsichord was undecided. After this the two young men, of the same age, became warm friends. Handel shortly after established himself in London, but Scarlatti’s life was always a wandering one. He was at various times in the service of the Queen of Poland in Rome, as composer for her private theatre; _maestro da capella_ of St. Peter’s, where he composed sacred music; in London, producing his operas; in Lisbon; and, finally, at the court of Spain, where he was appointed music-master to the princess of the Asturias. After fifteen years in Spain he returned to Naples, and died there in 1757. He left no money, but his family was provided for by the great singer Farinelli, who, likewise, had been many years at the court of Spain in highest favor.

Domenico Scarlatti’s operas and masses are now forgotten, but his fame as a composer for the harpsichord is immortal. What Chopin and Liszt did for the pianoforte music of their day Scarlatti did for music for the harpsichord in his. It has been often said that he was the founder of the pianoforte style. This is true, unless the French composer François Couperin shares the honor with him. Of the brilliant virtuoso style he is unquestionably the founder. His instinct for style and form made no false step, and his music is astonishingly sparkling and fresh when played by modern virtuosi on the modern pianoforte. The works of his French contemporaries, Couperin and Rameau, are unmatched in delicacy and grace and a most refined sentiment; still it may be said that their charm to modern ears consists not a little in an exquisite old-fashioned spirit which breathes from a court life long since ruthlessly stamped under foot, whereas Scarlatti’s music compels attention and admiration even to-day by its vigor, flash, and daring. Moreover, it is free as air from all heaviness of rhythm or of contrapuntal intricacies and yet is none the less clear-cut and perfect in form. It is, first of all, virtuoso music. Most of the pieces demand the utmost speed and lightness of touch. Among the most difficult devices he frequently employed is the crossing of hands, by which he obtained instrumental effects hardly less brilliant than those of Liszt. And yet his music is not all empty display. There is an epigrammatic clearness about it which has the sparkle of all genuine wit, irrespective of the time which gave it birth, and at times there is a masculine touch of poetry, enriched by various expressive harmonies, notably in one, the most famous of his sonatas, that in D minor, which is familiar to all concert-goers in the elaborated form and higher key into which Tausig has transcribed it. Unlike other composers in his day, he did not set four or five pieces together in a suite, but kept his pieces separate, and called each one a sonata or an exercise. Nor did he label any of them with the dainty suggestive names that became the fashion in France and Germany. They are all short and all in the same form. Each is made up of two sections, one of which begins in the tonic and modulates to the dominant, or, if the key is minor, to the relative major; the other from this key back to end in the tonic, frequently by way of contrasting remote keys. Both sections are repeated in their turn. The effect is one of precise balance and clearness. There are generally two quite distinct figures or even themes which are employed in such a way as to suggest the sonata form of later development, the first given at the start in the tonic key, the second in the second part of the first section in the dominant or relative major; and the sparkling liveliness of the pieces depends not a little on the contrast and play of these two distinct figures, their neat and regular arrangement, and the satisfying return of them in the second section of the piece. Such an aptness, such a clear-headed wit is hardly met with anywhere else in music. If the glitter of Scarlatti’s harpsichord music is sometimes hard, it is never false. It is the glitter of a diamond, not of tinsel. It has never tarnished. It flashes brilliantly from an age when much was false--clean-cut, polished, impervious, and, in its pointed way, defiant.

Thus in Italy three men sum up the seventeenth century and inaugurate the eighteenth. They were not alone in their day, but their contemporaries, once equally famous, have for the most part sunk into an oblivion from which only the enthusiastic historian recovers them. And even the most gifted of these three, Alessandro Scarlatti, becomes daily less a substance and more a shade, though what there was of intrinsic worth in the Italian opera of that time was developed and adorned by him to stand as a model for Handel, for Haydn and Mozart, and for Rossini and Verdi. Corelli, his friend, and Domenico Scarlatti, his son, built with less perishable stuff and on the foundations which they laid for the branches of music in which they were adept great monuments have been reared. Their genius and their musicianship were less great than those of the elder Scarlatti, but their compositions were of a piece with reality, not, like his, the adornment of a false and meaningless convention. Hence their music still speaks for itself to-day, a language sometimes thin, but in the main clear and strong, whereas others must speak for Scarlatti. In the oratorios of Handel and in the vocal works of Bach the best of what the Italian opera composers of the seventeenth century accomplished was perpetuated, and Scarlatti was unquestionably the greatest of these composers. The seeds of his genius were thus transplanted from the sterile soil in which circumstances had forced him to sow them and they bore fruit in strange forms and alien lands.

So ended the supremacy of the Italians in the history of music. After the death of Scarlatti the Neapolitan opera became wholly trivial. The list of composers is long. Some are distinguished by a certain elegance of style, such as Feo, Vinci, and Cafaro, others by a cleverness in handling the orchestra, such as Durante, and still others, notably Porpora and Leo, were very great teachers of singing; but for the most part they were all as like as eggs and none added anything of lasting value to music. The comic opera alone had any real life. This, the last creation of the Italians, was powerful in directing the course of music and will be treated in another chapter.

III

What Alessandro Scarlatti did for opera in Italy, Lully had done for opera in France. The French opera, like the English opera, of which we have the one splendid example in Purcell’s 'Dido and Æneas,’ was of quite distinct origin from the Italian. Whereas the Italian opera sprang from attempts to restore the method of combining music and dramatic declamation, practised by the Greeks, the French opera developed from a form of entertainment that had long flourished in France and was dear to the hearts of the French people--the ballet.

The famous _Ballet-comique de la royne_ given in Paris at the Petit Bourbon on the 15th of October, 1581, in honor of the marriage of the Duc de Joyeuse and Mademoiselle de Vaudemont, sister of King Henry III, is in a sense the first attempt in France toward what we now call opera. It was a magnificent spectacle in which songs, choruses, and dancing played a part. The plan of it was made by Baltasar de Beaujoyeaulx, whose real name was Baltasarini, groom of the chamber to the king and the queen mother (Catharine de Medici). The music was by the Sieur de Beaulieu, whose true name was probably Lambert, and another composer named Salmon, and the verses were by one named La Chesnaye. A few excerpts from a contemporary account of the performance will best illustrate what the ballet was. It was given before the king and his mother and an assemblage of the highest nobles in France. As for the overture the writer of the account says: 'After some measure of silence had been established there came from behind the walls the sound of oboes, cornets, sackbuts (trombones), and other sweet-toned instruments.’ After this the Sieur de la Roche, escaping from a garden at the back of the hall, came and delivered an address before the king. He was followed by the sorceress Circe, from whom he had evidently escaped and who was bent on having him back again. But he eluded her and she returned to her garden. Then three sirens and a triton appeared and sang a chorus, which was echoed by singers concealed in a golden arch at the back of the hall. They disappeared and an immense fountain was drawn upon the stage by two sea-horses; and about the fountain twelve naiads were grouped, among whom were ladies of highest rank, covered with gold and jewels. The fountain was drawn round the room, spouting 'real water,’ surrounded by eight tritons playing lutes, harps, etc., and by a dozen pages or more bearing lighted torches, all singing. After this chorus, Glaucus and Thetis took their place in chairs at the foot of the fountain and sang a little dialogue to which the tritons answered in chorus. The fountain was then drawn off behind Circe’s garden, and ten violinists came forward, dressed in white satin hung with gold, and played for the first dance which was taken by the twelve pages and the twelve naiads who had returned. Circe appeared, furious, from her garden and laid all the dancers under her spell so that they stood motionless, and then she retired to her garden swollen with victory. Suddenly there was a loud clap of thunder and Mercury appeared, descending in a cloud from which he sang. He then stepped from his cloud and freed the dancers from Circe’s spell, whereupon they at once took up the dance again. Mercury went back to his cloud and Circe came again upon the scene and bewitched not only the dancers, but Mercury himself, whose cloud would not conceal him, so that they all followed her two by two into her fatal garden. And here the garden was brilliantly lit, and the spectators saw walking therein a stag, a dog, an elephant, a lion, a tiger, and various other beasts who were once men, who now had undergone Circe’s spell. The first act ended here.

The second act opened with a five-part song for satyrs to which the golden vault replied in echo. A forest advanced across the floor of the hall, a forest with a rock in the middle and oak trees hung with garlands of gold, and four dryads to whom the satyrs sang a song of welcome. The forest went before the king and from its leafy depths a young dryad delivered a speech to him; then the forest turned to the left and proceeded to Pan’s grotto. Here Pan welcomed the dryads with a tune on his flute and they complained to him of Circe who had imprisoned not only their playmates the naiads, but Mercury himself as well. Thereupon Pan promised his aid and the wood went away. Entered then the four virtues, two of whom played upon the lute while the other two sang a little duet. The golden vault responded with an instrumental piece in five parts, and then Minerva approached in a car drawn by a huge serpent, Minerva bringing the head of Medusa. She delivered yet another address to the king and invoked Jupiter, who, after a few claps of thunder, descended in a cloud. He stood on his cloud and sang a song, after which the cloud deposited him upon the floor and he went off with Minerva to Pan’s grotto. Poor Pan was soundly scolded by Minerva for having let Circe steal away the naiads and Mercury. Pan, though replying that the power to overcome Circe belonged alone to Minerva, none the less started off for Circe’s garden followed by eight satyrs armed with knobbed and thorny clubs. Minerva went along, too, to the assault, but Jupiter was left alone on the stage. Once before Circe’s stronghold, that wily lady harangued her assailants and made fun of Minerva and of Jupiter. To Jupiter she said: 'If any one is destined to triumph over me, it is the king of France, to whom you, even as I, must yield the realm you possess.’ Minerva and her heroes broke down the door of Circe’s garden and Jupiter struck the lady herself with a thunderbolt, who thereupon fell senseless to the floor. Minerva got possession of the magic wand, released those who had been chained by Circe’s spell, and at last restored Circe herself, who joined with her to lead a procession of all who had taken part in the play around the hall. Then followed a grand ballet before the king.

This performance of the _Ballet-comique de la royne_ lasted five hours and a half and the cost of producing it was more than three million six hundred thousand francs. This was approximately a century before the performance of 'Berenice’ in Padua, of which mention has been made in a previous chapter; but whereas the Italian opera degenerated into a scenic display, the French opera resulted from a cutting down of lavish extravagance and uniting the various scenes and choruses with musical declamation.

The ballet remained the favorite diversion of the French court down to the middle of the seventeenth century, though the splendor of this _Ballet-comique_ was never reproduced. Though it approached what we now call opera, it remained differentiated from opera in a few fundamental points. Parts were taken by members of the court society, the whole entertainment was planned to flatter the king so that the lines spoken by the players were often directed to the monarch in the manner of Circe’s lesson to Jupiter which we have just quoted, and there were long addresses without music and without relation to the plot of the ballet.

In 1645 and 1646 Cardinal Mazarin invited Italian singers to give an exhibition of their opera in Paris. They were coldly received. In Perrin’s famous letter to his protector, the Cardinal de la Rovera, April 30, 1659, the Italian music was likened to plain-song and airs from the cloister. Yet it was with the aim of making an opera for the French on the plan of the Italian opera that Perrin wrote his Pastoral in 1659, for which Cambert composed the music. This pastoral in music, called sometimes _L’opéra d’Issy_, was performed at Issy near Paris with great success. There was present such a crowd of princes, dukes, peers, and marshals of France that the whole way from Paris to Issy was thronged with their coaches. There was not room in the hall for all who came. Those who could find no place were patient, promenading through the gardens or holding court on the lawns. By express order of his majesty Louis XIV, the Pastoral was repeated at the palace of Vincennes. So French opera was inaugurated.

Of Cambert, who wrote the music, little is known. He had lessons on the harpsichord from Chambonnières, the Nestor of French clavecinists, he was organist at the Church of St. Honoré, and following the success of the Pastoral he was appointed superintendent of music to Anne of Austria, mother of Louis XIV. For more than ten years after the Pastoral Perrin and Cambert kept relatively silent. There are a few drinking songs by Cambert which belong to this time, but the two men rest in obscurity until the first performance of their opera _Pomone_ on the 19th of March, 1671, at the Tennis Court near the Rue Guénégaud. In 1669 Perrin had obtained from Louis XIV the permit 'to establish throughout the kingdom academies of opera, or representations with music in the French language after the manner of those in Italy.’ Perrin secured Cambert to write music for these representations, and _Pomone_, their joint product, is the first opera publicly performed in Paris. A great part of their singers had been recruited from churches in the country, but the success of this first performance was enormous. Only the music of one act has been preserved. It is childish, but at moments may stand favorably by that of Lully. What makes it so heavy to our ears are the long passages of dull, unrhythmical recitative which, from the point of view of music, are vague and ill-formed.

To Cambert and Perrin must be given the honor of having established French opera. To them was awarded the first royal warrant to give opera throughout the kingdom. _Pomone_ was an auspicious beginning; but within a year trouble had come between the two men, and Cambert’s next opera was set to words by another poet, Gilbert, well known in his day. And then, apparently as sequence to the split between Cambert and Perrin, Cambert was himself deprived of his royal rights, the opera was given into the hands of one sole man, who had long been plotting to acquire it, and Cambert departed to England.

IV

This one man, Jean Baptiste Lully (or Lulli), was born in Florence or near there in 1633. He had come to Paris when a boy of twelve or thirteen in the suite of the Duc de Guise, knowing little of music, save the guitar. He had been a kitchen boy in the service of Mlle. de Montpensier, and now, in 1672, was given sole control over opera throughout the kingdom of France. The way in which he won favor with the king shows him to have been an intriguer, and the king to have had little genuine appreciation of music apart from the tunes to which he danced in the court ballets. Lully was at first admitted into the king’s band of violins, and later was made head of a special band. Not only was he a ready composer of dances to the king’s taste; he was himself a dancer and a mimic. In Molière’s comedy-ballets to which he was commissioned to compose music he often acted with much-admired skill. As to his treatment of Molière the less said perhaps the better. He was a skillful manager, he was always ready with some amusement for the court. From the start he played for the royal favor, and he won it. Not only was he given the sole authority to produce operas in France; Cambert was even denied the right to produce his as well.

Lully had no systematic training as a musician, but he learned from all he came in contact with; from Cambert, who had written music for the ballets; from Cavalli, who came to Paris with his _Xerxes_ in 1660; and again with _Ercole amante_ in 1662, to both of which Lully was commissioned to set ballets that they might meet with the requirements of French courtly taste. From 1672, when he gained control of the opera, to his death, in 1687, he wrote an opera, a _tragédie lyrique_, every year. His manner of composing, according to Lecerf de la Viéville (1705) was as follows: 'He read the libretto until he knew it nearly by heart; he would then sit down at his harpsichord, sing over the words again and again, pounding the harpsichord; his snuff-box at one end of it, the keys dirty and covered with tobacco (for he was very slovenly). When he had finished singing and had got his songs well in his head, his secretaries, Lalouette or Collasse, came, and to them he dictated. The next day he could hardly remember what he had dictated.’

Lully was a clever, exceedingly intelligent man, a good actor, a good clown, a good dancer, an unscrupulous plotter, an iron disciplinarian. Not only did he write the music to his operas, he superintended and often remodelled the libretti furnished him by Quinault, the poet of his own choosing. He was indefatigably painstaking. He coached the singers even to the way they should enter and leave the stage, and he drilled the orchestra so that it had a precision, the traditions of which endured for more than a century. He was not a great musician. One may believe that he left the filling out of his harmonies to his secretaries, Lalouette and Collasse. His airs and his choruses are in the ballet style of the century. Only in recitative did he accomplish anything new. He wrote his operas at the same time Racine was producing many of his most famous tragedies--Racine, who was a master of verse and of declamation; and he modelled his recitative according to Racine’s art of declamation. The great law of it is that it shall be syllabic, one syllable to one musical tone. Music is here in strict bondage to words. Lecerf says that the recitative as developed by Lully is a just mean between tragic declamation and the art of music. According to L. de la Laurencie[139] a comparison of Lully’s recitative with the recitative of Carissimi or of Provenzale shows that Lully proceeded to a clearing of the Italian technique, cutting from it all the absurd weeds which the taste for _bel canto_ and even musical taste in the strict sense had let grow in the garden of melody. We have in the recitative of Lully, then, something that is not music, but a mean between declamation and music. Often stiff and monotonous, it is only rarely impassioned and effective. Always the words, the rhyme and the verse are of paramount importance. In this regard it was so much to the taste of the French audiences, of the _précieux_, that Lully’s operas came to be valued far more for their recitative than for their airs. The recitative became not an artificial bond between airs and choruses, but the main burden of the opera, as indeed it should be; and in this respect he is a great reformer and akin to Monteverdi on the one hand and Gluck on the other. He is the founder of the admirable French style of declamation. Thus the opera of Lully and the opera of Scarlatti are strikingly different. Both were bound to a strict public convention, but Scarlatti wrote for the _bel canto_, Lully for declamation; the Italians craved the sensuous beauty of the voice in song and let the drama go; the French demanded intelligent declamation, and sacrificed music. Of the two the French opera was essentially more rational and nearer artistic truth, though even in Lully’s lifetime it became wholly stereotyped; and neither form as it left the hands of its finisher was capable of further development until infused with new life by a great reformer such as Gluck.

To Lully as a musician belongs the credit of having given definite form to his overtures. The so-called French overture as he established it was generally in two parts or movements--the first slow and serious, the second lively and in vigorous, fugal style. Sometimes a third movement recalling the first was added. These overtures were much admired in their day and during the next century, and the form was adopted by most of the German composers as the first movement of the orchestral suite, and by Handel for overtures to his oratorios. Lully seems to have been most successful in instrumental music of a 'noble and martial kind.’ Marches from his operas were actually played for soldiers in the field, and 'when the prince of Orange wanted marches for his troops, he had recourse to Lully, who sent him one.’ All of Lully’s airs and especially his dance tunes have a simplicity and a clearness of outline which secured to them a popularity not forgotten even to-day. It is music easy to remember, vigorous in rhythm and in sentiment, positive and definite, often poor in harmony and grace and never subtle, but on the other hand never vague or weak. As far as it goes it goes unfalteringly and with a sureness that challenges respect and is at times superb.

After the death of Lully, early in 1687, French opera subsisted upon what he had left it. There was no man to take over his supreme dictatorship and until 1723, when Rameau began to write for the stage, no operas of any influence were written in Paris. Conventional form was too strong even for a man like Charpentier, whose musical gifts seem to have been higher than Lully’s. Desmarets, Des Touches and Campra are hardly more than imitators of Lully. Lully stands alone in the history of French opera during the seventeenth century as absolute a despot in the realm of music as his great patron, Louis XIV, over the lands of Europe. He won his place by intrigue, he kept it by an enormous strength of will and perseverance and by shrewd observation of the court taste.

There was no more genuine critical appreciation of music in France during the gorgeous reign of Louis XIV than there was in Italy, Germany or England at the same time. According to M. Combarieu,[140] there was no more real public than there were true critics--a few wits writing verses and publishing their dislikes or their flatteries, their naïve admiration for banal prowess in virtuosity. The mark of the king is on all music; music for the king’s ballets, for the king’s opera, for the king’s suppers, for the king’s fêtes, and above it all the haughty, majestic king. Lully and Racine, Lully and Molière!

V

In salon music courtly elegance shines in miniature. After the death of Lully a young man grew into prominence who was to win from the king his own appellation, the Great--François Couperin. He was born of a family of famous musicians in Paris in 1668. From 1693 he was organist to the king in the chapel at Versailles, and in 1696 he was elected organist of St. Gervais, a post which had been held for many years by members of his family; but though he is said to have been an excellent organist, his fame now rests upon his skill in playing and writing for the _clavecin_. He was private teacher to princes and princesses, to the highest ladies of the land, and never by one note did he offend against the precise and elegant etiquette in the midst of which he was formed. He was an exquisite dainty stylist in music, a painter of delicate miniature portraits. Porcelain is not more fragile than his music, nor crystals of frost clearer cut. There is no suggestion of feeling too deep for elegance. A touch of courtly tenderness, a mood of courtly melancholy are the _nadir_ of his emotion. His little works for the _clavecin_ are masterpieces of form and style. They never suggest the great power of music to express the fire of man’s heart and the struggle of his soul.

Lacking the daring brilliance of Scarlatti’s sonatas, they are none the less perfectly suited to the thin, frosty instrument for which they were written. For many years they stood as perfect models of harpsichord style and their influence can be traced in the works of all his contemporaries, even in those of J. S. Bach. Four sets of them were printed in 1713, 1717, 1722, and 1730. There are twenty-seven suites or _ordres_, each containing a varying number of little pieces which no longer bear dance names nor emphasize dance rhythms, but are given suggestive, dainty names after the style of Gaultier and Chambonnières. Many of them are portraits of court ladies of the time. _La douce et piquante_, _La majestueuse_, _L’enchantresse_, _L’engageante_, _L’attendrissante_, _L’ingénue_, etc. Others affect the fashionable pastoral romance, such as _Les bergeries_, _Le barolet flottant_, _La fleurie, ou la tendre Nanette_; others are bits of delicate realism, _Les petits moulins à vent_, _Le carillon de Cythère_, etc.; and a few have highly colored names such as _Fureurs bachiques_ and _Les enjouements bachiques_. Besides these _ordres_ he published transcriptions of works by Corelli and Lully which were called _Apothèse de Corelli_, and _Apothèse de l’incomparable Lully_.

In all his work there is an unblemished purity of style, a charm of melody, a delicate sense of harmony. They are all very highly ornamented with trills, mordants, turns, etc., which often sound too heavy on the modern pianoforte, but which were necessary in music for the harpsichord with its thin tone and lack of all sustaining power. His 'Art of Playing the Harpsichord,’ published in 1717, had an enormous influence. A passage of it almost brings Couperin, court clavecinist, before our eyes. These are his directions for having a correct appearance when playing: 'One should turn the body a little to the right while at the harpsichord. Do not keep the knees too close together; have the feet parallel, but the right foot a little forward. One can easily correct oneself of the habit of making faces while playing by putting a mirror on the desk of the harpsichord. It is much more becoming not to mark time with the head, the body, or the feet. One must affect an easy appearance before the _clavecin_, without looking too fixedly at any one object, nor on the other hand looking vague. Look at the audience, if there is one, as if one were doing nothing in particular (this for those who play without their notes).’

Undoubtedly here is a refinement of art which has never since been equalled, a neatness and precision in every detail; but it brought with it a self-consciousness and a suppression of virile emotion, made of music an exquisite toy and of the musician a courtier. Couperin’s music suffers more by being played on the modern pianoforte than that of his contemporaries, Scarlatti, Handel, and Bach. The greater sonority of tone clouds the fragile perfect workmanship. There is in it no depth of emotion nor daring brilliance to meet the strength of the new instrument. As music they belong to their time; as works of perfect art they are imperishable.

Couperin died in 1733, just as the last and greatest of the French composers of this time, Jean Philippe Rameau, was about to bring out his first opera, _Hippolyte et Aricie_. Rameau was fifty years old. His life had been hard and varied. He had been organist in a provincial town; he had published sets of pieces for harpsichord in Paris; he had published in 1722 a treatise on harmony, the first of his many important works on that subject; he had been engaged in writing ballets for the theatre, and made himself a favorite music-master among ladies of high rank. At the house of La Pouplinière he had met Voltaire and with him had written an opera, 'Samson,’ which had been forbidden by the Academy on the eve of its performance. At last, on the 1st of October, 1733, _Hippolyte et Aricie_ was produced at the Academy. It brought a storm of abuse upon the composer who had dared to attempt more than a slavish imitation of Lully. He gradually won some respect and continued to write operas, among which _Castor et Pollux_ (1737), commonly considered his masterpiece, achieved a marked and continued success. However, no success would silence his detractors. Rousseau made himself the mouthpiece for those who cried him down. And in 1746, just when he had succeeded in overcoming the violent hostility of the Lullists, a company of Italian singers at the _Comédie italienne_ won over a half of the Parisian public so that Rameau found himself engaged in another and yet fiercer struggle as defender and head of French music against the Italian invaders. The malice and brutality of this famous _Guerre des bouffons_ are incredible, but the whole affair points unmistakably to a state of society in which all critical judgment had given way to unenlightened prejudiced controversy. Rameau won but a temporary victory. After his death, in 1764, Italian opera was supreme in Paris until the arrival of Gluck.

Rameau’s operas are æsthetically different from Lully’s. Less skillful than Lully in recitative, he far excels him in genuineness of feeling and in harmony. Rameau was a great musician. His studies in harmony were profound and far-reaching in their effect, and the texture of his music was softened and warmly colored by a richness of chords and modulation. His works for the harpsichord are not so polished as Couperin’s, but are more virile; and the last set (1736) shows the influence of Scarlatti. What is most striking about him is his independence of court life and convention. Lully was backed by the most powerful monarch in Europe, whose protection assured him success. Rameau had nothing to hope for from the debauched court of Louis XV, in spite of the official royal recognition. He withstood the most venomous attacks alone, and by the courage and power of his own will made himself head and champion of the music of his country.

VI

At the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth, Germany was under the influence of the French and of the Italians. In Hamburg there was the nearest approach to a national spirit. Hamburg was one of the most brilliant opera towns, but, whereas in Dresden, Berlin, Munich, and Vienna the Italian opera was supreme and Italian singers and Italian composers held sway, in Hamburg operas were with few exceptions given in German and were furnished by German composers. It must be said, however, that most of the composers were strongly under the influence of the Italians or of Lully, and many of the _libretti_ were translations or adaptations of Italian _libretti_. Chief among the composers stands Reinhard Keiser, a man of loose principles and luxurious life, but of extraordinary musical facility. Apart from a great deal of sacred music, he wrote not less than one hundred and sixteen operas. It was while he was at the height of his fame that Handel came to Hamburg.

At Hamburg also was Johann Mattheson, first of all a singer under Keiser, then a conductor and composer. But his compositions have all been forgotten, and he is important now only as the writer of 'Foundations for a German Roll of Honor’ and 'The Complete Kapellmeister,’ both of which are the source of much that is known about German music previous and up to his time. The Roll of Honor is a series of short biographies of German composers. Living composers were asked to write an account of themselves for it. Bach seems to have been invited to do so and to have declined the invitation. Mattheson is also remembered for his duel with Handel.

The most prolific of all composers in Germany was Telemann, friend of Mattheson and Handel, but of his works nothing is remembered. Of more importance is Karl Heinrich Graun, who was head of the Italian opera in Dresden and Berlin, and whose _Te Deum_, composed after the victory of Frederick the Great at Prague (1756), and _Tod Jesu_ are still heard. As precursor of Bach in the St. Thomas school in Leipzig, Kuhnau is of interest. He was a staunch musician of the old school, a man of remarkable learning. In the history of German clavier music he is the most important figure before Bach. His _Sonata aus dem B_ seems to be the first piece of clavier music in three movements not dance tunes. They were published in Leipzig in 1695. In the next year appeared his 'Fresh Clavier Fruit or Seven Sonatas’ and after those his 'Biblical Sonatas,’ which are surely among the most curious records of music in an age gone by. They are frankly program music. Each sonata consists of a number of little pieces illustrative of some story from the Bible. There are the story of David and Goliath, the story of Jacob and Leah, the story of Saul and David. It was in imitation of them that Bach wrote his only piece of program music, the Capriccio on the departure of his brother to the wars.

J. J. Fux was from 1698 to 1741 a court composer in Vienna, greatly beloved and admired. He is remembered more as a teacher than as a composer, and his text book in the form of dialogues _Gradus ad Parnassum_ was for a century one of the standard books on composition.

In Dresden the figure of Hasse, the Saxon, becomes prominent after 1731. He was perhaps the most successful opera composer of his day. Probably not a little of his success was due to the glorious singing of his wife Faustina. Hasse, too, was a friend of Handel and of Bach.

Keiser, Mattheson, Telemann, Graun, Hasse, Kuhnau, and a host of others, all prominent in their day, have been forever obscured by the glory of J. S. Bach and Handel. As we have chosen Purcell, Scarlatti, Corelli, Lully, Couperin and Rameau to represent what the musical genius of England, Italy and France was able to build upon the foundation of Italian experiment in the first half of the seventeenth century, so we must choose Bach and Handel to represent Germany. Germany was a little behind the other nations of Europe to present what the sum of a century was to her. This was partly owing to the destruction of the Thirty Years War from which she was slow to recover, partly because she had no central capital like London and Paris to foster the best of her native genius. Yet all the experiment, all the enthusiasm, all the labor of the seventeenth century are gathered up in the work of her two great sons; all other composers of all other nations are small beside their genius. L. H.

FOOTNOTES:

[139] _Le goût musical en France_ (1905).

[140] _Histoire de la musique_, Vol. I.