[Adagio molto e mesto.
Violin 1.
Violin 2.
Viola.
'Cello.]
The listener to Beethoven's quartets will be impressed with the applicability of these words to them, and he will in a measure be prepared to see where some of Beethoven's successors have failed. Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Spohr, and other German composers wrote admirable chamber music. So have some of the French and Italian composers. But it cannot be said that this branch of instrumental art, its purest and most thoroughly symmetrical form, has made any advance since Beethoven's day. On the contrary, it has retrograded. This is from two causes: first, the frequency with which piano parts are written in a style so massive and brilliant as to overwhelm the strings in trios or piano quartets and quintets; and second, the unwise attempts of some composers to imitate heavy orchestral effects with only four or five stringed instruments.
Among those who have produced the best chamber music in recent years must be mentioned Brahms and Dvorak, who have been named in the chapter preceding this. The chamber music of Brahms includes a sextet for strings, three piano quartets, a piano quintet, several trios, three string quartets, a string quintet, and a quintet for clarinet and strings. These works are conspicuous for the completeness of their musical organism, the originality, profundity, and artistic reticence of their style, the deep learning with which they treat modern thoughts in a revised polyphony, and the breadth of their intellectual earnestness. It is difficult to understand how any one can deny the genius of Brahms after hearing a good performance of such music as the slow movement and scherzo of his piano quintet.
Dvorak has written a considerable quantity of chamber music, but no final criticism can yet be passed upon it. The composer himself realizes that his earlier quartets and trios, though melodious and clear, contained a great deal of discursive matter. His later writings show an immense improvement in conciseness, strength, and closeness of development. His American quartet and quintet are admirable as examples of form and of treatment of instrumental voices.
Chapter XV
The Birth of Oratorio
Religious character of the Greek drama—The early Christian plays—The liturgical drama—Miracle plays and their introduction of abuses—Reformatory efforts of St. Philip Neri—Ascent of the music to a place of importance—Recitative and Cavaliere's work—Improvements of Carissimi, Stradella, and Cesti—Alessandro Scarlatti and the aria—Advent of Handel and Bach.
HAVING traced the development of piano music, chamber music, and the symphony, from the time at which these began to be separate branches of art up to the present, it now becomes necessary to return to the point of departure and follow a new line of progress. It is the task of the reader now to accompany me in an examination into the origin of oratorio. Difficult as it may be to realize it now, the oratorio was in its infancy a dramatic performance, and it took its origin from the ancient religious drama, which, indeed, is the source of all modern drama. Greek plays, as imitated very badly by the Romans, most directly affected oratorio. The Greek drama began at the altar of Bacchus, where the priestesses sang about the sacrificial goat, the goat song, the "tragos ode," the tragedy. At Delphi grew up representations of the slaying of a serpent by Apollo, and at Eleusis the "Eleusinian mysteries" portrayed in dramatic action the rape of Persephone and the wanderings of Demeter. So originated the Greek drama, which until the death of Æschylus was chiefly an embodiment of the religious beliefs and hopes of the Greeks.
When Christianity was introduced in Greece and Rome the people clung to the play form and continued to use the old mythological personages. The fathers of the Church speedily perceived that such plays were distinctly hostile to the progress of the true faith, so they set about writing religious dramas which should present to the people the facts of Christianity quite as attractively as the older plays presented those of Paganism. This work began in the second century (if not earlier), but the old ideas clung firmly. A curious drama called "Christ's Passion," long supposed to have been written by St. Gregory Nazianzen, Patriarch of Constantinople near the end of the fourth century, contains a curious mixture of Biblical personages, church hymns and extracts from Greek plays. About one-third of the verse, for instance, is taken from Euripides. Dr. Brambs, of Leipsic, has proved that this "Christ's Passion" dates from the tenth, not the fourth century. It is not difficult to see how the early Christian dramas could have developed from the elaborate liturgical presentations of such events as the nativity, the annunciation, and the crucifixion. Indeed there are extant some twenty-seven or twenty-eight liturgical arrangements which are purely dramatic in form and style. Their musical part was provided by the old Latin hymns. In one of these dramas, "The Shepherds," occur passages used in Handel's oratorios, such as "Glory to God in the highest," and "Behold, a virgin shall conceive and shall bear a son."
It was a natural outcome of the social condition of the era that in the course of time these dramas, enacted frequently in the open air, forced to appeal to a heterogeneous mass of densely ignorant persons, and bound to employ their very superstitions in order to gain their comprehension, should have permitted the introduction of all kinds of triviality and vulgarity. In "The Fall of Lucifer" the devil was introduced with horns, tail, cloven hoof, and a glaring red beard. Noah's wife, in another play, refused to go into the ark, and Noah took a stout cudgel to her. Adam and Eve appeared naked, and donned their fig leaves in the presence of the audience. One very popular play in the fifteenth century was performed on a three-story stage, of which the top story represented heaven, the middle one earth, and the lowest one hell. The devil had now become the buffoon of the drama, and was driven about by the populace with blows from inflated bladders tied to the ends of sticks. In one play there were four devils to keep the fun going, and jugglers, acrobats, and buffoons were introduced, until the medieval religious drama resembled the modern "farce comedy."
A reform, which led to the establishment of the oratorio, was caused by the work of St. Philip Neri (born in Florence, 1515), founder of the Congregation of the Fathers of the Oratory at Rome. An old Italian writer, Crescembini, says: "The Oratorio, a poetical composition, formerly a commixture of the dramatic and narrative styles, but now entirely a musical drama, had its origin from San Filippo Neri, who in his chapel, after sermons and other devotions, in order to allure young people to pious offices, and to detain them from earthly pleasure, had hymns, psalms, and such like prayers sung by one or more voices.... Among these spiritual songs were dialogues." The truth is that St. Philip Neri induced capable Italian poets to make his librettos, which consisted of dialogues interspersed with choruses. The music he had written by the best composers, even Palestrina contributing to the good cause. The beauty and purity of these works caused them to become popular among the more intelligent young Romans, and St. Philip's oratory (whence the name oratorio) was always crowded.
The invention of dramatic recitative near the close of the sixteenth century produced a marked effect on oratorio. It very quickly took the place of the dialogue, and thence-forward for many years there was little difference between opera and oratorio except in the nature of their subjects. The first oratorio with dramatic recitative, of which any account has come down to us, was "L'Anima e Corpo," written by Laura Guidiccioni and composed by Emilio del Cavaliere, one of the little band of musical explorers who gave us opera. This oratorio was performed in Rome in 1600. The orchestra, consisting of a double lyre, a harpsichord, a large guitar, and two flutes, was placed behind the scenes, and the oratorio was presented as a musical drama. The chorus sat on the stage, but when singing arose and made appropriate gestures. Complete stage directions were given in the work for the action of the various characters. The oratorio ended with a chorus "to be sung, accompanied sedately and reverentially by the dance," and there was provision for a ballet, "enlivened with capers or entrechats."
The new form of religious drama soon won its way to general appreciation, and composers were not slow to avail themselves of the opportunities it gave them. Giovanni Carissimi (1582-1672) wrote a number of oratorios, excellent for their time, among them "Jephthah," "Solomon's Judgment," "Belshazzar," and "David and Jonathan." Carissimi made great improvements in the recitative, giving it more character and real musical expressiveness than his predecessors had. He also showed much skill in his choral writing, which was not so completely polyphonic as that of the earlier church writers. He often used bold successions of broad and simple chords and often his writing for the voices is much like that of Handel, a century later. On the whole his work shows a tendency to abandon a close adherence to the methods of the early opera composers and to move toward the style subsequently formulated by Handel. Alessandro Stradella (1645(?)-1681(?)) and Antonio Cesti (1620-?), the latter, a pupil of Carissimi, did much toward developing the choral part of the oratorio. Dr. Parry says: "Stradella had a very remarkable instinct for choral effect, and even piling up progressions into a climax; and his solo music, though apparently not so happy in varieties of spontaneous melody as Cesti's, aims equally at definiteness of structure. His work in the line of oratorio is especially significant, as he stands comparatively alone in cultivating all the natural resources of that form of art—on the lines which Handel adopted later—at a time when his fellow composers were falling in with the inclination of their public for solo singing, and were giving up the grand opportunities of choral effect as superfluous."
The tendency of dramatic music, the state of public taste, and the skill of solo singers all had their influence upon oratorio during the sixteenth century, and the most popular oratorio composers were those who also wrote the most successful operas. Alessandro Scarlatti, who has been mentioned earlier in this book, was the musical dictator of his day, and his oratorios show a great gain in the elasticity and direct expressiveness of the recitative, which is quite as dramatic as that of the contemporaneous opera. But perhaps his treatment of the aria was more influential. It was he who made the aria the central sun of the operatic system, and he naturally gave to the solo parts of his oratorios more definiteness of melody. His treatment of the aria, with its passages of pure vocal display combined with clearly formed tune, led the way directly to the Handelian style.
George Frederick Handel was born at Halle, Germany, Feb. 23, 1685. He studied first under Zachau of Halle, and began his musical career as an opera composer at Hamburg. He went to Italy and studied faithfully the works of the Italian masters, some of whom (the Scarlattis, Corelli, and others) he met personally. His three years in Italy saturated him with the spirit of Italian music, and he was always influenced by it. On his return to Germany he became chapel master to the Elector of Hanover. In 1710 he made his first visit to England and wrote his opera "Rinaldo." In 1712 he went to live in England, where he remained till his death, April 13, 1759. Handel, having failed pecuniarily as an opera composer, took up the work of oratorio writing. His principal oratorios are: "The Messiah" (Dublin, April 18, 1742, and London, 1749), "Israel in Egypt" (1740) "Judas Maccabæus" (1747), and "Saul" (1740). The oratorio as we know it today dates from Handel, and it was in his day that Dr. Gibson, Bishop of London, gave a decision which put an end to acting in this branch of art and removed it entirely from the realm of dramatic representation.
Contemporaneous with Handel was Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) who is believed to have made five different settings of the story of Christ's passion. Of these only two have been preserved: that according to St. John (1724), and that according to St. Matthew (1729). The latter is regarded as the greater, and is esteemed by most critics as the noblest of all compositions in the oratorio form. The reader has seen how the oratorio in Italy developed up to the time of Handel, who took up that line of progress and advanced it. His oratorios are strictly in the line of Italian development, with such modifications as the character and nationality of the man would naturally produce. We shall best understand the subsequent development of oratorio if we now review the history of passion music and examine the peculiar character of this product as compared with the oratorio of Handel.
Chapter XVI
Work of Handel and Bach
History of "Passion" music—Heinrich Schütz and his "Seven Last Words"—His "Passions"—The text of Brockes—Distinguishing features of the forms of Handel and Bach—The former as a development of Italian oratorio—The latter as essentially German—Protestantism and the chorale—Bach's intimacy and Handel's popularity.
THE history of passion music previous to that of Bach is voluminous. Early in the middle ages the history of the passion according to the four evangelists was sung on the four days of Holy Week. This was done in the Roman Catholic churches. A priest intoned the words of the narrative, a second priest the words of Christ, and a third those of the other personages in the story. The words of the populace, the crowd, were sung by the choir in the polyphony of the time. The Protestant authorities saw the value of this form of service as a means of impressing the story upon the popular mind and continued its use, but with German instead of Latin text. As early as 1530 there were passions according to St. Matthew and St. John, with German text and music by Johann Walther. The first published edition is a passion according to St. Matthew, with music by Clemens Stephani, printed at Nuremberg in 1570. Various versions written by Melchior Vulpius, in 1613, Thomas Mancinus, 1620, and Christopher Schulz, 1653, are known.
An important contribution to the development of passion music was that of Heinrich Schütz (born at Köstritz, Saxony, Oct. 8, 1585, died at Dresden, Nov. 6, 1672). Schütz was a pupil of Giovanni Gabrieli, of the Venetian school of organists, and was made chapel master at Dresden by the Elector George I. In his "Seven Last Words of Christ" (produced in 1645) we find a fusing of all the elements which appear in the earlier passion music, and also a definite foundation for the form employed by Bach. The work begins with a four-part chorus set to the words of the old hymn:—
"Since Christ our Lord was crucified
And bore the spear-wound in his side."
An instrumental "symphony" follows and leads up to a recitative by the Evangelist (alto voice) who tells the story: "And it was close upon the third hour when they crucified the Lord, and Jesus spake." The words of Christ are then sung by a baritone: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." The narrative is not confined to one voice, tenor and soprano also taking part in it. The words "And at about the ninth hour he cried aloud and said" are set for a quartet. So also are the words "And after he had thus spoken," etc. An instrumental symphony follows the close of the story, "And he gave up his spirit," and the work ends with a chorus expressing the thoughts of the Christian Church. Significant features of this work are its use of recitative instead of plain chant, which was used in the narrative and recitative parts of the earlier Passions, its preservation of choruses of the old polyphonic motet style, its employment of a carefully made instrumental accompaniment, and its introduction of the two picturesque orchestral interludes. Schütz's recitative, it should be noted, was not so much like the modern oratorio recitative as like the arioso style,—that in which the recitation has a melodious character.
In the years 1665 and 1666 Schütz produced four settings of the Passion. In these the composer, in an effort to combat the growing influence of Italian opera music in Germany, abandoned the instrumental accompaniment and wrote his choruses in the pure a capella church style. But his individual characters, the evangelist, Christ, and others, used dramatic recitative. The Passion music of Giovanni Sebastiani, written in 1672, approaches the form of Bach's very closely. The Evangelist, who tells the story in a recitative of melodious character, is a tenor, and his recitation is accompanied by 2 violins, viola, and bass. The sacred aria makes its appearance in this setting, and so also does the four-part Protestant chorale. This introduction of the chorale grew out of the custom, which had formerly prevailed, of asking the congregation at convenient points in the Passion to sing a hymn.
There were other versions of the Passion, but that which most concerns us at present was an arrangement of the text in 1712 by Barthold Heinrich Brockes, a member of the Town Council of Hamburg. This was set to music by several composers, among them Handel, and it was known to Sebastian Bach. This text appears to the taste of the present to be overloaded with ornate figures of speech. The reader may now be able to perceive the differences between the form and style of the oratorio proper as cultivated by Handel and of the Passion oratorio, as a special variety, cultivated by Bach. In the St. Matthew Passion, the master-work of Bach, the narrative part of the text, according to the writings of Matthew, is sung by a tenor in a form of recitative. The speeches of Jesus, St. Peter, the High Priest, and Pontius Pilate are always delivered by a bass. The Jews are represented by a chorus. A second group, representing the ideal Christian congregation, introduces moral observations, while a third group sings chorales, representing the spirit of Protestantism.
In Handel's "Messiah" the text, taken from various parts of the Bible, gives an outline of the story of the coming of the Saviour, of his suffering and death. There are solos by tenor, soprano, alto, and bass voices, which are used entirely for musical effect. There is no attempt to identify any voice with any personage. "He was despised and rejected" is sung by the alto; "I know that my Redeemer liveth," by the soprano; "But who may abide the day of His coming?" by the bass. The entire treatment of the text is regulated by musical considerations. It is not possible to discover that the chorus represents the populace or the church. For instance, the bass sings the air "The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light" with text from Isaiah; and this is followed by the chorus "For unto us a son is born" from the same book. Then comes the pastoral symphony, a bit of purely descriptive instrumental music, which serves as a prelude to the scene of the shepherds, which is narrated by a soprano voice. This wholly undramatic style is not unlike the purely musical manner of setting the mass and the other parts of the church liturgy, and has been closely followed in its form by modern composers in many works in which the element of personality is not a factor. It was followed by Handel himself in some of his other works, by Haydn in "The Seasons," and by Mendelssohn in his "St. Paul" to a considerable extent.
But Handel himself thoroughly understood the value of the old-fashioned form of Carissimi, in which the personages were treated dramatically and uttered direct speeches. The familiar number, "Total Blindness," from his "Samson," is an example of this. But the difference between the oratorios of Handel and Bach is not merely one of form. It is still more noticeable in the style and the spirit. The Handelian oratorio, although it may not at first sight appear to be so, is a direct descendant of the Italian. Handel was completely saturated with the spirit of Italian music, and he developed his musical style from it. It was plainly his purpose in building the great choruses of his oratorios to follow the ecclesiastical polyphonic style of Italy. But this in itself had undergone certain technical changes. In the first place, the disappearance of the old church scales and the introduction of the modern major and minor keys had placed polyphony on a new basis and compelled a more free and unrestricted treatment of the voice parts in order that the new laws of harmony might not be broken. Again the old church choruses were designed for performance without accompaniment, while the oratorio choruses had to follow the later custom and make use of the orchestra. Hence Handel's polyphony had to be cast in broader and more powerful masses, while his orchestral accompaniment had a certain amount of independence, and at times even considerable descriptive power. His entire musical scheme, however, was devised to reproduce in broad tints the emotional spirit of the text.
Handel's choruses are full of musical characterization, and it is this spirit, even more than the style, which distinguishes them from those of his Italian forerunners, and which has made them stand the test of time and manifold changes of musical taste. "The Messiah" is the most popular oratorio in the United States, because its broad mass effects are instantly influential, even among those who neither perceive their musical character nor comprehend their artistic purpose. Strongly marked rhythms, fluent melody, and powerful climaxes are among the easily discernible elements of the greatness of Handel's choruses, but the deeper secret of their power is their admirable adaptation of old means to the promptings of a new spirit. Handel never forgot his public, however, and it is largely because he kept always before him the necessity of achieving his artistic purposes with attractive means that his "Messiah" continues to be popular. The fundamental elements of popularity in music do not change radically, after all, and hence Handel's music holds its own in the absence from the domain of oratorio of anything of a more influential nature.
Two great characteristics mark the difference between Bach's work in the development of oratorio and Handel's. In the first place Bach was essentially German in thought and practice, and in the second place he cared comparatively little about producing beautiful melody and attractive musical effects, but devoted his energies to the most accurate, detailed, and subtle expression. The Teutonism of Bach's music is to be seen not only in the intense earnestness and high intellectuality of it, but in its wide and significant employment of the German chorale and of a musical style developed therefrom. As Dr. Parry has noted, Bach's early life was given up to the study of organ playing, and hence the voice parts in his choruses follow the method of organ counterpoint. His choruses are, therefore, not so broad and massive as Handel's, but present a more scholarly and varied polyphony. "Where Handel aimed at beauty of melodic form, Bach strove for characteristic expression." Handel's counterpoint is the smooth, mellifluous, facile counterpoint of the Italians; Bach's, seeking always to fit the musical phrase to the immediate context, is severe, intricate, and evasive. Its demands on the hearer present themselves as a series of numberless details, demanding of him unusual closeness of attention and delicacy of perception. Handel's melodic form and mass effects are easily appreciable by the masses; Bach requires more attention than the masses ever give, but he repays study with a revelation of great riches. To sum up this part of the matter, Handel was Italian in his knowledge of how to please, while Bach was German in his conscientiousness and thoroughness.
The employment of the German chorale in Bach's Passion music was not only the result of his adherence to established custom, but the outcome of his life-long devotion to this characteristic embodiment of the spirit of Protestant Germany. Bach treated the chorale melodies in many of his works, such as his organ chorales and his motets, as the medieval composers treated the cantus firmus, the liturgical chant. He used it as the subject of a contrapuntal work, weaving around it a rich, yet austere polyphony, which voiced the plain methods of the Protestant Church as fully as the medieval counterpoint reflected in music the artistic method pictorially embodied in Gothic architecture. It was altogether natural and fitting that when he came to set the Passion he should have used the chorale as the most complete and satisfying exponent of the Protestant faith, for that was what it had come to be in Germany. To this day the Lutheran hymn "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott" is the battle-hymn of the German Protestant.
Bach lacked the impulse of the Italian to write tune for tune's sake. Striving as he did "for characteristic expression," it was impossible for him to reach a simple song-style in the solo parts of his Passion. His recitative is too intricate, too detailed, and too thoughtful to produce the broad declamatory effects of Handel's. The same assertion may be made as to his airs. Bach's music always has a reflective quality which robs it of the conventional dramatic appearance and stands as an obstacle in the way of its immediate appreciation by a miscellaneous and unprepared audience. There is nothing popular about Bach's music. He never comes down from his elevation to meet the crowd. If you wish to understand Bach you must climb up to his height, and that is never easy to do.
Both the forms, that of Handel and that of Bach, have individuality and distinct limitations. Bach's style, capable as it is of intense feeling, is essentially intimate, personal, and undramatic. It is always the voice of Bach in direct address to you that you hear. Handel's method is productive of broad and imposing effects, and while it is frequently only theatrical, it is quite as often sincerely and convincingly dramatic. One of Handel's biographers says of his great choruses: "They are choral recitatives, uttered by the voice of a multitude instead of a man. And strangely enough, the path that led to this embodiment of the composer's aspirations was the dusty path of Italian opera, where great combinations were impossible, science all but wasted, and where a giant intellect found little to grasp." Yet it is precisely the development of Handel's oratorio style from his work as an Italian opera composer that establishes its direct connection with the progress of the original Italian school of oratorio founded in Rome. It was the outcome, the climax, and the end of this school. Bach's Passion oratorios were the product of a purely German and Protestant ancestry, and they, too, were the highest achievement of their school. The subsequent history of oratorio will show us how attempts were made to fuse the elements of the two schools.
Chapter XVII
Haydn and Mendelssohn
Decadence of oratorio after Handel and Bach—Haydn and "The Creation"—Development of descriptive orchestration in oratorio—Haydn's oratorios descriptive and contemplative—Mendelssohn and the fusion of styles—His dramatic German Protestant oratorios—Mingling of elements from Handel and Bach.
FOR a considerable period after the deaths of Handel and Bach nothing of note in oratorio form was produced. One must seek for the cause of this in the vitiated state of public taste. Europe was addicted to the Italian opera habit, and in those days Italian opera was quite as empty, meaningless, and insincere as it has been at most periods in its history. There were no Italian composers who had sufficient genius to combine dramatic truth with musical beauty, so those who were writing contented themselves with the easily attainable, and turned out watery arias to please the superficial multitude. It was much easier for people to listen to that sort of music than to the imposing works of Handel or the subtle productions of Bach. Indeed the work of the latter was not known far outside of his own country. The large and comprehensive "History of Music," by Sir John Hawkins, published in 1776, when England was not yet through mourning the loss of Handel, contains a very brief mention of Bach, and says nothing at all about his Passions. They indeed were quite forgotten till Mendelssohn found that according to St. Matthew and resurrected it a hundred years after it was written. In the meantime Sacchini, Paisiello, Jomelli, and other Italian opera composers, whose works are now as dead as the Pharaohs, were writing worthless oratorios in operatic style.
Josef Haydn (1732-1813) began his career as an oratorio composer by writing an Italian work, in 1774, called "Il ritorno di Tobia." It was in the accepted form of its time, and though it contained some melodious solo parts and some well made fugal choruses, it shared the fate of other oratorios in the same style and sank into oblivion. Before Haydn reached the closing years of his life, however, two influences combined to change the public attitude toward operatic and oratorio music. Gluck had made a determined stand against the meaningless jingle of Italian opera music and had shown how to write operas which should be simple, melodious, and dramatically honest. Mozart had taken the entire extant apparatus of Italian opera and shown how it could be made the vehicle of the fullest dramatic expression and the most faithful characterization. The people in general were led to revolt against the employment of the unsuitable style of the old-fashioned opera in church music, of which they felt oratorio was a close connection. They saw that if Italian opera music was unfit for the stage, it was certainly less suited to a form closely allied to worship.
Meanwhile Haydn had been in London and had heard some of Handel's oratorios. The knowledge gained therefrom he was now to put to good use in constructing the choruses of his new works. His own developments in orchestration had been supplemented by Mozart's revelation of the wide possibilities of tone-coloring, and Haydn, equipped with all this knowledge, was to make a most important contribution to the growth of oratorio in its orchestral department. In the latter days of his great career, in 1798, Haydn produced "The Creation," a work which has survived its worthless predecessors of the post-Handelian period, and which is welcomed today wherever music lovers have not lost their ability to appreciate simplicity and unpretentious beauty. In form "The Creation" is much more closely allied to the epic form of "The Messiah" than the dramatic shape of "Samson" and other works. The solo parts of "The Creation" are assigned to persons in the drama, as Adam and Eve, but these persons have no dramatic character or function. Their voices are employed only as those of narrators or commentators. They narrate the events of creation and comment on its wonders. The reader will at once see that this method deprived the work of the powerful element of personal characterization. The emotions of Adam and Eve never come to the surface. There is no passion, no grief in "The Creation." Thus it makes a step backward toward the music of pure religious contemplation, such as we found at the close of the era of church counterpoint. But Haydn's means were more modern. His arias for the solo voices have all the beauty of melody and style to be found in the best Italian writing for the stage, while they add to these elements a sincerity never wanting in the music of Haydn.
The choruses are naturally designed on a less imposing scale than those of Handel, which, as we have seen, had a certain dramatic quality. The general style and purpose of Haydn's oratorio writing made it inevitable that his choruses should be more contemplative or descriptive and less dramatic, and his development of the instrumental accompaniment emphasized this condition. It was Haydn who introduced into the oratorio purely descriptive orchestral music, and in doing this he paved the way for later composers to make stronger dramatic effects. Descriptive music in the orchestra, and instrumental accompaniments with special significance, are now a familiar part of the apparatus of the lyric drama as well as of the oratorio. Haydn employed these means as a part of his general scheme of descriptive writing. In order to give his instrumental description full scope, he was obliged to cast his choruses in a simpler mould than those of Handel, but his contributions to the art of descriptive writing were quite as valuable within their field as Handel's to the art of building huge choral climaxes. The prelude to "The Creation" is an instrumental representation of chaos; in the recitative beginning "And God made the firmament" are instrumental illustrations of storms, winds, thunders, and floods; the air "Rolling in foaming billows" has an accompaniment designed to suggest to the hearer the movement of waves. These were Haydn's original devices, and as such, although they sound simple and even naive to us today, they claim an important place in the advancement of musical art.
Haydn's second oratorio, "The Seasons," was produced in 1801, and although the composer's powers failed rapidly thereafter, there is no evidence of weakness in this work. In all essentials the form and style of this oratorio, which is secular, being founded in Thomson's poem of the same name, are the same as those of "The Creation." It is a descriptive, contemplative work, and must please by its thoughtful beauty and illustrative power. It is without the dramatic element. Ludwig Spohr (1784-1859) wrote oratorios, one of which, called "The Last Judgment"—though its name literally means "The Last Things" has some claims to consideration, inasmuch as by reason of its purely contemplative method and its instrumental descriptions it stands in the direct line of oratorio progress. It is, however, not frequently performed. It was produced at Cassel in 1826.
We come now to the master who established a new form of oratorio,—a form which is unsurpassed in its possibilities, and in which he left us the greatest masterpiece of dramatic oratorio. Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) wrote two oratorios: "St. Paul," produced in 1836, and "Elijah," first performed in 1846. Though Mendelssohn was never a writer for the stage, for which his style was not at all suitable, he was not undramatic in his musical instincts. He was inordinately fond of programme music, and was somewhat more inclined to attribute to music a definite directness of utterance than most thoughtful commentators are willing to concede to it. He certainly went far toward justifying his theories by his "Midsummer Night's Dream" overture, but one must be careful to note that this composition is almost wholly made up of what has happily been called scenic music,—music descriptive of the externals of a drama, not of its subtler emotions. That Mendelssohn, however, had on the whole the right conception of the expressive power of music is shown by his reproof of the man who tried to give titles to the "Songs Without Words," and by his quotation of the opening measures of his own Hebrides overture as his attempt to express his own feelings aroused by the winds and waves. On the whole, it must be conceded that Mendelssohn had a correct idea of the dramatic expressiveness of music and a deep sympathy with it.
At the same time Mendelssohn, though of Jewish blood, was intensely German. Furthermore, he was baptized and brought up as a Protestant Christian. It is not at all surprising, then, that he was prepared to be powerfully attracted toward the Protestant oratorio, when he approached that form of composition, and to show little sympathy for the Italian form, as perfected by Handel. As early as 1823 the score of Bach's "St. Matthew Passion" was copied from the manuscript and placed in his hands for study. It is not difficult to imagine the effect of the work on the mind of an eager, ambitious boy of fourteen, already a composer, and just passed through the severe process of German preparation for confirmation. Mendelssohn became an enthusiastic propagandist of the teachings of Bach, and revived the "St. Matthew Passion" in Germany, where the general public had quite forgotten it.
In preparing himself for the task of composing his first oratorio, "St. Paul," Mendelssohn undoubtedly gave close study to the works of his great predecessors. That he should have rejected almost instinctively the Italian style of Handel followed as a matter of course. That he should have put aside with equal readiness the austere style of Bach was inevitable. Mendelssohn was from the outset an exponent of graceful, fluent melody. His genius was deeply tinged with the sentiment of song, and he could no more have sacrificed beauty of theme and perfect simplicity of form to subtlety of detail than Handel could. But at the same time his dramatic instincts told him that the sure way to the hearts of the people was the old Italian way, which made the oratorio in all essentials, except scenery and action, a religious drama. He knew at once that Bach's method of presenting the speeches of the principal personages in direct recitative was good, but that it had fallen short of complete effectiveness from two reasons: first, because the speeches were led up to and quoted by the evangelist narrator; and second, because the musical character of the recitative was too detailed to appeal to a general audience. But Mendelssohn saw one tremendous factor in the Bach oratorio,—the chorale as an embodiment of the Protestant faith of Germany.
In his "St. Paul" he did not arrive at the true method of dealing with the elements which appeared to him to be essential to an influential and permanent form of oratorio. The book is episodic and lacks dramatic continuity. The plan is religious rather than dramatic. The martyrdom of St. Stephen is the first episode, and it is without direct connection dramatically with the other two, the conversion of St. Paul, and his later career as a preacher. Both Stephen and Paul are deficient in definiteness of characterization. They appear to us rather as representations of an idea, which may be expressed in the words, "Go ye unto all the world and preach the gospel." But in "Elijah" we have the genuine modern dramatic oratorio, and in it we find that Mendelssohn made use of those parts of the apparatus of his predecessors suitable to his designs. "Elijah" is eclectic. It is a fusion of forms and styles, made with great skill and with the finest possible discrimination. It is a logical evolution, and Mendelssohn showed in its composition an instinctive grasp of the evolutionary principle of the survival of the fittest,—that is, the fittest for his design.
He dispensed with the narrator and directed his attention to placing the speeches of his personages before the auditor in the most direct, dramatic, and characteristic manner. He used the choruses as Handel did, to impersonate the mass of people. He employed the chorales exactly as Bach did, to signify the thought of the Church as it had come to be understood in Germany. His scenes are all arranged in dramatic form, and without doubt could be placed upon the stage effectively if the whole feeling of contemporaneous audiences were not opposed to that method of giving oratorio. His characters are drawn clearly and sharply. Indeed, there is no oratorio in which the musical characterization is so finely worked out. The contrasts between the choruses of the priests of Baal and the Jews are sufficient evidence of this. But everywhere throughout the score there is evidence of a consistent and successful effort to adapt to the production of a powerfully dramatic, yet specifically Protestant and German, oratorio, the most influential elements of the forms of Handel and Bach, together with Haydn's instrumental coloring.
The very beginning of the oratorio strikes a new note, and one of tremendous dramatic power. Three broad chords are followed by the portentous prophecy of Elijah, "As God the Lord of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word." After that single passage, set to a style of recitative wholly different from that of either Bach or Handel, yet containing some of the qualities of both, follows the overture, a piece of music descriptive of the misery of the land of drought. Thenceforward everything moves dramatically. The people cry, "Help, Lord; wilt Thou quite destroy us?" Then they beseech, "Lord, bow Thine ear to our prayer." Obadiah calls them to repentance with warning and with the lovely air, "If with all your hearts ye truly seek me." Later an angel comes and commands Elijah to go to Cherith's brook, and then follows the double quartet, "For He shall give His angels," a new employment of Bach's commentary chorus. The episode of Elijah and the widow is treated with dramatic directness, and is followed by the commentary chorus, "Blessed are the men who fear Him."
The whole scene between Elijah and the priests of Baal is magnificent in the eloquence of its dramatic form and style. Yet the superb air of Elijah, "Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, this day let it be known that Thou art God," is followed by the pure old Bach species of chorale, "Cast thy burden upon the Lord." The climax of the oratorio is reached in the great scene of the coming of the rain. This scene is constructed and composed with a fine sense of dramatic values, and its effect is so sure and strong that it puts before the imagination a vivid picture. It is no wonder that in England, where dry and dusty works are produced year after year by native composers, such a masterpiece as "Elijah" is always heard with unabated enthusiasm. Here it is overshadowed in the popular mind by "The Messiah," and perhaps this is due in some measure to the public absorption in opera.
Since Mendelssohn achieved his fusion of the most influential elements of the Italian and German oratorios, no significant advance has been made in the oratorio form. This, of course, is due to the fact that no musician of genius has found in that form a vehicle suitable to the character of his thought. Good, workmanlike compositions have been produced in England, where oratorio is more popular than it is in any other part of the world, but so far as can be judged from the disadvantageous position of close proximity to the novelties, nothing of large worth has been written there. It seems safe to say, however, that the greatest choral composition written since Mendelssohn's day is the German Requiem of Brahms. But it lies outside the field of oratorio. Edgar Tinel, born at Sinay, Belgium, on March 27, 1854, has made an attempt to return directly to the Italian dramatic form of Carissimi, but employing modern musical material. His oratorio, "St. Franciscus," produced in Brussels in 1888, employs the entire musical apparatus of modern German opera, including the full resources of Wagnerian orchestration. The result is that the music smells of the theatre, and the whole style of the work is foreign to the religious atmosphere of the oratorio. Charles François Gounod (1818-1893), the famous French opera composer, made an attempt in his "Redemption" to produce a modernized treatment of Bach's passion form. Gounod was always a student of Bach, and was thoroughly acquainted with the various forms employed by that master. In "The Redemption" he followed the Bach plan of giving the narrative to one or two separate male voices and having the direct speeches of Jesus quoted by a baritone. He employs the chorale to represent the voice of the Church, while modern chorus forms are used to represent the crowd. Gounod also uses a single typical theme to embody the love of Jesus, and this, of course, is a device of later date than Bach. But the ground plan of "The Redemption" is plainly modelled on that of the "St. Matthew Passion." There the resemblance ends, for Gounod's recitative and choral writings are modern and sweetly melodious without subtlety.
Chapter XVIII
The Birth of Opera
Festival plays and intermezzi—Dreary character of music in plays—Influence of Greek learning—Attempt to resuscitate the dramatic declamation of the Greeks—Galilei and his "Ugolino"—Caccini's Nuove Musiche—Peri's setting of "Daphne"—Production of Rinuccini and Peri's "Eurydice"—The character of the new music.
THE modern opera was the result of a deliberate attempt to revive the Greek drama, and that attempt was caused chiefly by dissatisfaction with the music of medieval festival plays. The direction of the attempt was guided by the revival of Greek learning in Italy, a revival of which the reader has already been informed in Chapter VI. In order, however, that the reader may have a clear understanding of the conditions which led to the birth of opera, it is necessary that the author should briefly review the state of vocal music employed in plays in the sixteenth century. The reader will best understand this by recollecting that the entire art music of the time was colored by the use of the ecclesiastical scales and the complete devotion of composers to church counterpoint. The result was that in the beginning there was no difference, except in the subjects of the libretti, between the religious dramas, from which the oratorio was developed, and the secular plays with music, which may be regarded as the forerunners of the opera. These plays contained no recitative, because recitative had not yet been invented. They consisted of dialogue interspersed with choruses, and these choruses were always written, like the madrigals and other secular songs of the time, in one or the other of the ecclesiastical scales and in three, four, or five part polyphony.
Accounts have come down to us from a time as early as 1350 of the employment of plays with musical accompaniment performed to bring to a close the carnival festivities in Florence. This accompaniment at first consisted of a single chorus sung at the end of a scene, to a text bearing some relation to that of the play. The absurdity into which it fell at times may be understood from the fact that the text sung in a polyphonic chorus was frequently supposed to be the utterance of one of the personages of the drama. Toward the end of the fourteenth century the custom of introducing these pieces of music grew until they were known as intermezzi. The intermezzo grew in importance till it became a separate play of lighter character than the principal drama. As our fathers used to go to the theatre to see "Richard III.," followed by a one act farce, so these medieval Italians went to see a serious drama relieved by a humorous or fanciful intermezzo; the difference being that the intermezzo was performed between the acts of the play. The intermezzo subsequently rose to such an importance that it developed into opera buffa, the comic Italian opera. But for the present we are concerned with it only as a forerunner of opera.
In 1589 Giovanni Bardi, Count of Vernio, wrote, as the festival play for the marriage of the Grand Duke Ferdinand with Christine de Lorraine, "L'Amico fido" with "grand, spectacular intermezzi." There were five intermezzi: "The Harmony of the Spheres," by Rinuccini, Cavaliere, and Malvezzi; "The Judgment of the Hamadryads," by Rinuccini and Marenzio; "The Triumph of Apollo," by Rinuccini, Marenzio, and Vernio; "The Infernal Regions," by Strozzi and Caccini; and "The Fable of Arion," by Rinuccini, Cavaliere and Marenzio. This production naturally stimulated the movement in the direction of true opera, while it served to emphasize the utter unfitness of the extant style of music for dramatic purposes. The more frequently the composers undertook to set to music dramatic libretti, even of the simplest nature, the more firmly they became convinced that their music was not the right kind. The musical artists of the time had followed the methods of the religious drama, described in the chapter on the birth of oratorio, and were now gradually awakening to the fact that its style of music was incapable of illustrating the human passions and emotions of the secular drama. The dissatisfaction first found general voice in 1579, when a festival play, with music by Claudio Merulo and Andrea Gabrieli, was performed in honor of the marriage of Francesco I., Duke of Tuscany, with Bianca Capella, of Venice. The text of the choruses was full of joyous praise of the beauty of the bride; the music was in strict canon and in four parts, and made the wedding songs sound like funeral hymns. The artistic nobility of Florence was deeply displeased, and it was then that the Count of Vernio and a circle of his friends set out to see how they could improve the state of dramatic music.
The reader will recollect that in Chapter VI I spoke of the great influence of the revival of Greek learning in Italy on the simplification of musical style. The friends and associates of Count Vernio were all enthusiastic students of Greek literature; and to them the masterpieces of Æschylus and Euripides had come as revelations. It became their fondest ambition to restore the Greek drama, but they soon learned that in order to do this they must find their way back to something like the Greek music used in that drama. It was in searching for this that they hit upon the much desired substitute for the unsuitable polyphonic choruses. The Greek drama resembled the opera rather than the play of the present day. Music was an essential part of it. The dramatic and lyric elements were inseparable, and the one modified the other. The spirit of the text was as faithfully represented in the music as it was possible to represent it with the music of that age. We have abundant evidence that the Greek tragic writers were also composers. H. E. Krehbiel, in his "Studies in the Wagnerian Drama," has excellently summarized this evidence. A fragment of a theoretical work on rhythm by Aristoxenus is filled with lamentations over the decadence of dramatic music since the days of Æschylus. The author accuses contemporary composers of pandering to a depraved public taste. Sophocles was not only a poet and a composer, but an actor and a singer. In his own drama "Thamyris" he appeared as a singer stricken blind by the muses. Special note is made by the Greek writers that Euripides had to call in the aid of a composer to supply the music for one of his plays. In the Greek play the actors did not declaim their lines; they chanted them. The odes which filled the pauses between the various stages of the dramatic action were sung by the chorus which gravely danced around an altar between the stage and the audience. These choruses were sung in unison, and were accompanied by instruments.
It was this dramatic recitation in music as practised by the Greeks that the little circle of enthusiasts, habitually assembled at the Palazzo Bardi, set out to resuscitate. But they had no specimens of it and hence were forced to do the best they could from descriptions. The most significant fact that struck home into their minds was that a single personage sang or intoned his part alone, and with an accompaniment of lyres or instruments of that class. Of course solo singing was not unknown to the medieval Italians. The troubadours and minstrels were practising it, and furthermore it is inconceivable that they themselves did not often hum the catch of a madrigal. Musical historians too often speak of solo singing as if it were a sudden invention of the Bardi circle. What they did was to begin the artistic cultivation of it on certain lines and to produce something which became dramatic recitative. Vincenzo Galilei, father of Galileo, the famous astronomer, was a most enthusiastic advocate of the ancient music. He entered into a published controversy with the composer and theorist Zarlino, who warmly defended the music of his time. Galilei's "Dialogo della Musica Antica e Moderna," published in 1581, presents Count Vernio and Pietro Strozzi, one of the poets of the Vernio circle, as discussing ancient and modern music. It seems strange to us to find Galilei condemning modern music—that of the church in 1581—as suitable only for uncultivated persons and not for the scholar. Galilei, however, was not content with precept; he added example. He selected a passage from Dante's "Inferno" and under the title of "Il Conte Ugolino" he set it to music for a single voice with lute accompaniment. He was an admirable lutenist and his performance of this, the first artistic monody of which we have any record, must have been very effective. The work itself is lost.
Giovanni Battista Doni, in his "Compendio del Trattato de' Generi e de' Modi della Musica" (Rome, 1635), tells us that Galilei was the "first who composed songs for a single voice," but he declares that Giulio Caccini, another member of the circle, "in imitation of Galilei, but in a more beautiful and pleasing style, set many canzonets and sonnets written by excellent poets." Caccini collected a number of these songs, which are in pure recitative style, and published them in 1601, under the title of "Nuove Musiche." He wrote a long preface, in which he claimed the honor of the highest achievement in this new kind of music and stoutly upheld its superiority to that of the contrapuntists. Here is a specimen of this "new music," which will give an excellent idea of the kind of musical recitation those enthusiasts of Florence evolved from their attempts to revive the Greek drama.