Bach and Handel rescued the Germans from the reputation of being musical barbarians, for Germany had not had a Lully or a Palestrina! But just in time, Bach and Handel entered and Bach carried composition to maturity and religious musical art to its highest point, while Handel was one of the foremost opera and oratorio composers of his day.
And indeed not until Mozart’s day did the Italians think that Germany was anything but barbarous, not in fact until they were outranked in Italian Opera by a German.
Of all the unassuming men of genius Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) is the most lovable. Never did he seem to realize that he was doing anything, but the will of God, never did he seem to care what people thought of his work, but went on composing, supporting twenty children, often with so little money that he tutored and played at funerals to eke out a living. In his life there was little glitter. Bach was a saint, if there was ever a saint. Although some few admired Bach during his lifetime, it was not until one hundred years after his death that his works were known and that he received the fame he deserved.
The Bach family for six generations were musicians, beginning with his grandfather “to the 5th power,” Veit Bach, a Thuringian baker in the 16th century whose pleasure “was to use a small zither, which he took with him to play, while the mill was moving.” All his descendants became musicians down to and beyond Johann Sebastian.
The Bachs were great family lovers and every year they held reunions, at which all of the different members living in various parts of Germany, met together and enjoyed a jolly time singing and playing.
Sebastian was born in 1685 in Eisenach, the town where Martin Luther wrote his stirring chorales. His father Ambrosius began very early to teach him music, the family profession, and Sebastian started with the violin.
But the poor little boy lost both father and mother when only ten years of age, and he was left to be brought up by his elder brother, Johann Christopher. Sebastian was passionately fond of music and although Christopher taught him to play the clavier, nevertheless this sad little tale is told:
Sebastian had seen Christopher with a book of music including pieces by Froberger, Pachelbel, Buxtehude, and others. Sebastian was very anxious to get it and play bits from it. Christopher forbade him to touch it and put it away in a cupboard, which fortunately had a lattice door, for Sebastian, every night during the full moon, (because he did not dare to use a candle), copied the book note for note. When Christopher discovered this, the little lad was soundly scolded and was witness to Christopher’s burning it before his poor eyes!
It did not seem to daunt him, for from this time on, he copied the great works whenever he could.
It became necessary for Sebastian to earn money to save Christopher’s purse, and in 1700 he became a choir boy at St. Michael’s in Lüneburg, where he received lessons without paying for them. He was happy here, with a library where he could copy music to his heart’s content, and every vacation he went on foot to Hamburg to learn of the great organist, Reinken. He visited too the court of Celle where he heard Couperin’s music, which no doubt helped to develop his style.
Soon he left Lüneburg and went to Saxe-Weimar where he entered the orchestra of Prince Johann Ernst. But his interest was in the church and when he was eighteen he tried for the post of organist in the Church at Arnstadt. He played so delightfully, despite his youth, that he was accepted at the first hearing!
He composed many works here and learned much about the organ, that was to be valuable to him and to us. He was well liked, too, and his playing was enjoyed. Nevertheless, his interest in others was so great, that he decided to go to see Buxtehude in Lübeck, and he was so interested in the master’s art that he forgot about his church in Arnstadt and stayed four months instead of one! When he returned he was severely reprimanded. Later, he received a second reprimand which is of tremendous interest for he was accused of “interspersing the chorale with many strange variations and tones, to the confusion of the congregation.” He was charged with the crime of being original!
Due to this lack of sympathy, he accepted a post as organist at Mühlhausen in 1707 and later in the year married his cousin, Maria Barbara, with great rejoicings. They had seven children, two of whom were the famous Wilhelm Friedemann and Karl Philip Emanuel.
The next year he became Concertmaster (first violinist), to the Duke of Weimar and remained there until 1718. This was a very fruitful composing period, for he had no money worries. He studied the Italian masters, especially Vivaldi, and wrote some excellent cantatas. However, he went soon to the Prince of Anhalt-Cothen, as Court Choir Master.
He made concert trips from here to Dresden and Leipsic, and it was in Dresden that he challenged the proud Marchand, the French organist, to a public improvisation contest on a theme, new to both of them. But the contest never took place, because, unknown to Bach, Marchand heard him play and when the time for the contest came, Marchand had left town hurriedly in an early post-chaise. And strange as it may seem, Emperor Frederick I gave Marchand one hundred ducats and Bach got nothing!
Bach’s new patron was a fine man and a Protestant and gave Bach every chance. At Weimar, he had become well known for his religious works and beautiful playing. But, as he had no organ, he wrote music for harpsichord, violin, chamber music and the orchestra, which was far from “grown up.” Here, too, he wrote the Brandenburg Concertos and the first part of his epoch-making work The Well-tempered Clavichord (48 Preludes and Fugues, 1722) which he finished in 1744. It is still the greatest work of its kind. In it he reaches the highest point of contrapuntal writing.
In 1720, while Bach was traveling with the Prince, his wife died. After a year and a half he married a charming singer, Anna Magdalena Wulkens, one of his pupils. They had twelve children and lived very happily. The lovely little tunes that he wrote for Anna Magdalena and his children have come down to us and many of us have played them in the first years of our music study. Isn’t it wonderful to think that the great Bach, who wrote some of the masterpieces of the world, could also write simple little Minuets and Preludes that any child can play?
But with all Bach’s comfort he missed an organ! Deep in his soul, he craved the making of religious music—it was part of his thinking. His religious ideas tied up with his music, were his life. So we see this saint leaving happiness at Cothen for an ill-paid post in Leipsic, as Cantor (1723) at the school of St. Thomas, where, succeeding Johann Kuhnau, he stayed the rest of his life and wrote his greatest works.
Bach wrote to a friend that he thought a long while before leaving his “gracious, music loving and discriminating Prince ... but it happened that my master married a ... princess who ... weaned my master from the loving interest he had ... toward our glorious art. And so God arranged that the post of Cantor at St. Thomas’ should fall vacant.... I took three months to consider the future and was induced to accept, as my sons were studious and I was desirous ... of gratifying their bent by entering them in the school ... and thus, in the name of the Most High, I ventured and came to Leipsic.”
Note, dear reader, the nobility, spirituality and sweetness here, thinking of his children and not of his career!
He struggled against the unsympathetic town council, the school, and lack of money. He wrote to his friend Erdman, “My present income averages $700. When funerals are numerous I make more, but if the ‘air is healthy’ then my income falls. During the past year I have earned $100 less, owing to the small number of deaths.”
In 1732 he wrote one of his few attempts at comedy.—the Coffee Cantata set to music on a text by Picander. Leipsic had become a slave to the new luxury, coffee, and in this Picander found material for a satire.
Besides his regular work, he had to teach dull, undisciplined pupils, attend to services in four churches, and be satisfied with the few singers and players he found for the performances he directed.
Yet, fed with the spirit of love that was within him, he was happy and his home was a center of joy. He never became too sad until he lost his sight three years before his death. Even then he dictated his compositions and conquered discouragement!
Bach’s life was made happier when Philip Emanuel became Court musician and clavier player to Frederick the Great, and he talked so much of his father that Bach was invited to Potsdam.
When Frederick the Great, who was playing the flute in his orchestra, heard that Bach was in Potsdam, he put down his flute and interrupted the concert saying, “Gentlemen, old Bach has arrived.” Bach appeared in his traveling clothes and was invited to improvise a fugue in six parts, which he did to the great admiration of all.
Yet many felt that his writings were lacking in charm! This was no doubt because people were getting accustomed to the Italian melodies which had become popular in Germany. Furthermore, when he wrote “The Art of Fugue” his son could sell but thirty copies and finally sold the plates for the mere cost of the metal! Students are grateful that copies of this work were saved, for it is still the greatest authority on fugue writing.
In 1749, Bach underwent an operation on his eyes but lost his sight and in 1750 died of apoplexy. So little was he appreciated that his grave was destroyed in the renovation of the Johanneskirche grounds. His supposed remains were discovered in 1894 and re-interred one hundred and forty-four years after his death. But—what remains of Bach, no known or unknown grave can bury.
A quarter of a century after Bach’s death, Mozart said, on hearing a Bach Cantata, “At last I have heard something new and have learned something.” Then later Mendelssohn re-discovered him, and Schubert, too, helped to bring him to the world’s notice. And not until 1850, a century after his death, was the Bach Society formed to honor Bach, the corner-stone of modern music.
Bach was a stalwart man with fine deep eyes, broad forehead and a grave face, lit with kindly humor. He had dignity and calm, was always courteous, and criticised only his pupils whom he wanted to help. When asked one time, how he played so well, he remarked, “I always have had to work hard.” He could stand no one who was pretentious and conceited. He wanted his rights but never boasted. One year besides fulfilling his other duties he wrote a cantata every Sunday! He wrote them as a preacher writes sermons. They had to be done and he never neglected his duty.
Bach was a devoted father and husband and his home was one of the happiest of any great genius. Many of his children were musical and he said that he had an orchestra in his own home!
Even his little half-witted son had genius and during the last years of Bach’s life when the dear old man had become blind, the little boy sat at the clavier, Bach’s favorite instrument, and improvised to the joy of his father.
It is impossible to describe in words just what Bach accomplished, so surpassing in beauty are his best works.
He brought the art of polyphonic writing to its highest and most sublime point. His value to the student cannot be exaggerated, for he is the musical Bible to all who would be musicians.
The organ was the core of his musical thinking and it is in the things which center about the organ that his art is loftiest.
Although he was most ingenious in writing counterpoint, he was never dry and tricky as were other writers. His subjects were always original and his melodic line always of rare beauty.
His works are most varied: fugues, motets, cantatas, passions, oratorios, concertos, sonatas and suites. He was a radical in his day, for he threw over conventional notions of harmony as to proper keys and insisted upon a new system of tuning the clavier, so as to use the whole range of tones. The “Well-tempered Clavichord,” two groups of 24 Preludes and Fugues in 24 keys, was the outcome of this. It was so called because it was written to show the possibilities of a clavier (or clavichord) tuned according to an idea of his, enabling one to play in all keys. This was one of the greatest discoveries in the whole story of music, for it made possible all the music which has followed. The keyboard was divided into equal half-steps. This made twelve half-steps within each octave and thus all the intervals became fixed, and modulation from key to key was possible. Heretofore, if one went from one key to another, the instrument sounded out of tune, but now instruments were tuned, as we glibly say, “to scale.”
He invented a new fingering in which the thumb and little finger were used for the first time. We wonder why the thumb had been snubbed!
The pianoforte was just coming into prominence in Bach’s day but he preferred the clavier, on which he felt he could play with more expression.
He developed the fugue to its highest point. A fugue is an enlarged canon in which the fragments of theme or melody are taken up and answered by two, or more, voices. One voice declares the subject and the answer is repeated usually in the dominant key a fifth above, while the first voice gives the counter-subject. There are various kinds of fugues, depending on their construction. After the voices have all entered, separated sometimes by little passages called “episodes,” a section in which the subject is freely developed comes, and then the stretto, in which all the parts enter racing and overlapping, building up to a climax; then follows the cadence or ending.
To write a noble or lofty fugue, neither dry nor pedantic, takes art to the nth power! Bach had the art that touched Heaven’s borders! In truth you can safely divide fugues into two classes—Bach’s and all others!
None of Bach’s works were published until he was forty years old, and most of them not until long after his death, and many of his manuscripts were lost and never published at all.
The list of his works is stupendous; the Bach Gesellschaft (Bach Society, 1850) published them in sixty volumes! Among them were the 48 Preludes and Fugues (The Well-tempered Clavichord Collection); 12 Suites; many Inventions in 2 and 3 parts; partitas; 12 concertos for 1, 2, 3 and 4 claviers with orchestra; many sonatas and concertos for violin, flute, viola da gamba, clavier, and orchestra; several overtures for orchestras; vocal works; 200 motets and cantatas; 5 Passions, of which the greatest are the St. Matthew and the St. John; 5 masses of which his B Minor Mass is a world masterpiece; oratorios; magnificats; many organ works, and old German chorales harmonized for voices.
When you can, try to hear Wanda Landowska play Bach compositions on the harpsichord. It is a glimpse into the beauty of the saintly Bach.
Also try to hear the great Bach Festival, directed by Frederick Wolle held yearly in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in the Moravian Church.
In a list of great men, Bach would be classed with Euripides, Sophocles, Shakespeare, Milton, da Vinci, Michael Angelo and Goethe.
Bach did not write for people, he wrote for his own soul. He never seemed able to write theatric music, for his was the drama of the spirit. Always, his music was the result of his musings, the confessions of his ideals. So he attained a loftiness, grandeur and sublimity far removed from even some of the most dramatic writers.
Bach’s sons reached great eminence. The eldest was Wilhelm Friedemann (1710–1784), an unusually talented man on whom the father built great hopes. But while Friedemann inherited his father’s musical talent he did not have his character, and was looked upon as a disgrace to the family on account of his dissolute ways. He was the greatest organist of his time and most of his compositions, which were considered very fine, have been lost to the world, for he did not take the trouble even to write them down, but played them from memory.
The third son, Karl Philip Emanuel (1714–1788), although trained to be a lawyer, could not resist the urge of music, and after going through two universities decided to become a musician to Frederick the Great. He was “general manager” of all the music at court until the Seven Years’ War put an end to his position after almost thirty years’ service. He then spent the rest of his life in Hamburg. As composer, conductor, teacher and critic his influence was great. He was loved and respected by the whole city. In his day he was regarded as being as important as his father, but we know that he was not in the same class, although he was the greatest of his contemporaries. He did not imitate his father’s style but developed the sonata into the form that Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven perfected. He was an innovator, not only in form, but in the treatment of melody and harmony. His best sonatas were written at the court of Frederick the Great.
In the growth of music he is the link between his immortal father and Haydn. Haydn was more gifted than he and made the seeds planted by Philip Emanuel blossom luxuriantly.
Johann Christoph (1732–1795) was an upright, modest, amiable man, and a splendid musician keeping up the family traditions.
Johann Christian (1735–1782), the youngest of those who outlived the father, might be called the Italian Bach, because he went to Italy in 1754, became organist of the Milan Cathedral, and wrote vocal music in the Neapolitan style. He left his position as organist, married an Italian prima donna, wrote many operas and spent the last twenty years of his life in London, as director of concerts.
Curious as it may seem, the great and gifted Bach family died out in 1845, with a grandson of Johann Sebastian. Out of twenty children there seems not to have been one to carry the line to the present day.
In the last chapter we saw Bach rescue music from the danger of emptiness and frivolity, by perfecting polyphonic music and dignifying church music as it had not been since Palestrina.
Bach and Handel were alike in that they were both born in Germany when music, especially opera, had become mechanical and full of set rules. They were both Lutherans and Thuringians. They worked about the same time, and tried to encourage the hearts and minds of their country, torn by the Thirty Years’ War; both were polyphonic masters; both organists. Bach attached himself to Frederick the Great, the protector of the faith, and Handel went to England, where there was liberty of thought; and both, died blind and of apoplexy.
The differences, with so many similarities, are most interesting. Bach, modest, retiring, was always a German subject; Handel became an English subject. Bach was a homebody with twenty children; Handel was a traveler and never married. Bach wanted only to satisfy himself; Handel, to satisfy the public. Bach was humble, Handel arrogant. Bach seldom fought for his rights, while Handel would dismiss even his masters. Bach cared little for applause, but Handel could not live without it. Bach was devoted to the lyric, Handel to the epic. Handel is usually (not always) heroic, Bach is usually religious (not always, of course). Handel is popular, easy to understand; Bach is deep, coming from the soul, and it takes more thought than the crowd is always willing to give to appreciate this giant.
Handel achieved great worldly success, and treated nobles as equals. Poor Bach worked contentedly in an humble position and struggled for money and profited by “bad air.” (See page 248.)
Bach demanded faith and love of art, Handel demanded ready ears. Bach never intended to make music, he only wanted to express his devotion in the best medium he had; Handel wanted fame and riches and the approval of the crowd. Handel died rich and Bach died poor.
George Frederick Handel (1685–1759) who wrote the immortal oratorio Messiah, and one of the greatest opera composers of his time, was born in Halle, Saxony. His father was a barber, but managed to get the title “Chamberlain to the Prince of Saxe-Magdeburg.”
Handel’s father wished him to study law, but George Frederick did not like the idea and besides he showed great musical gifts. One day when he was a little boy, he found hidden in the attic, a clavichord upon which he secretly played every chance he had.
Not long after this “find,” something most important happened. His father was going to Weissenfels to the Duke’s castle and had no intention of taking George Frederick with him. So, Father Handel seated himself in the coach, taking things comfortably, when he spied little George Frederick dashing along by the great wheels. He paid no attention to him, but after going a mile and realizing that the little boy was still following, he called out “What do you want?” “I want to go with you,” answered Handel, and although his father was quite annoyed, George Frederick’s will, as always, prevailed and he went with his father! At the court the Duke saw, very quickly, how gifted the little Handel was. His father relented and on his return to Halle, George Frederick was given instruction on the organ, harpsichord and in composition with Zachau, and taught himself the oboe and violin, greedily mastering all the music he could find.
Although he studied music he seems to have respected his father’s wishes and studied law and even after his father died in 1697, he continued, but later gave it up for music. At seventeen he entered the University, and studied, besides music, the literary classics which were of great use to him later.
On leaving the University he went to Hamburg, the musical center of Germany, where he heard Keiser’s works and received good advice from Johann Mattheson, the composer, tenor and conductor, who later engaged George Frederick in a duel.
The quarrel came about in this way: Handel was to lead Mattheson’s opera, Cleopatra, in order to relieve Mattheson, who sang the part of Antonio. After Antonio was “killed,” Mattheson being free to lead, entered the orchestra pit to take Handel’s place as leader. Handel was infuriated. They met later and fought a duel in which Handel was saved by a large metal button which snapped Mattheson’s rapier! What a little thing a button is and what it did for music!
Handel’s first four operas were written here for the Hamburg stage. But Almira (1705) is the only one ever heard now.
Next he visited Florence, Rome and Venice during which time he had the happiest three years of his life. He composed a cantata, an oratorio and other works; he learned much of melody and sweet flowing music, which softened his dry, stiff use of German counterpoint, and he gathered material for his later London work.
An amusing story is told of him in Venice. There was a carnival going on and Handel went to it. At one of the costume balls, he sat down to a harpsichord uninvited and began improvising, thinking that no one would know him. A gorgeously garbed figure dashed through the crowd to his side, and almost overcome by the music, gasped, “This is either the Devil or the Saxon.” (Handel was called “The dear Saxon”—“Il cáro Sarsone” in Italy.) It was Domenico Scarlatti’s first meeting with Handel, and forever after they remained warm friends.
In Vienna he met Steffani (Chapel Master) who persuaded him to go to Hanover and after a short time, the Elector, who became George I of England, appointed him Chapel Master and gave him permission to go to England for a visit before taking up his new work.
This visit was the turning point in Handel’s career, for later he became an English subject and he—but we must not get ahead of our story!
Handel went to England about fifteen years after the death of Purcell, “The Orpheus of England.” Handel was quick to see Purcell’s good points and modelled his first English work to celebrate the Peace of Utrecht, on Purcell’s Te Deum.
After arriving in London he wrote Rinaldo with an Italian libretto in fourteen days! He was the speed maniac of the 17th and 18th centuries. His librettist said of him, “Mr. Handel barely allowed me time to compose my verses.” Later he arranged Rinaldo for harpsichord and all England played it, especially the lovely aria Lascia ch’io Piango (Let Me Weep).
Yet Handel doesn’t seem to have made money out of Rinaldo, which brought the publisher, Walsh, $10,000, about which Handel said, “My dear fellow, the next time you shall compose the opera and I will publish it.” (History of Music, by Paul Landormy.)
Later, he became the guest of the Duke of Chandos, at whose house he wrote at least sixteen compositions.
King George had been very angry with Handel for leaving Hanover and remaining in England, but forgave him later, and Handel was made Director of the Royal Academy of Music which the King founded in 1719. Among Handel’s duties were the getting of the artists for the operas. This meant much to him and allowed him to travel all over Europe. He composed operas almost as people wrote their letters, for in eight years he produced eleven successful operas! Think of that for work!
But—he had a rival, Battista Buononcini, protégé of the mighty Duke of Marlborough, and a musical war raged in London. John Byrom, a humorist of the day wrote:
Handel won, however, and Buononcini left England. In 1729, another opera venture was started, an Italian opera society, of which Handel was made the Director. Off he went to Dresden and brought back Senesino, a tenor, and other famous singers. But Handel did not get along well with his singers and subordinates. He was too high-handed and because of his quarrels the opera was given up! On one occasion he dragged the singer, Cuzzoni, to the window and threatened to throw her out if she did not sing the way he wished. Various other reasons were given too,—one, the dispute between Cuzzoni, who was called the “Golden Lyre” and another soprano, Faustina, the wife of Hasse, a rival conductor. Colley Cibber, a critic of the time said: “These costly canary birds contaminate the whole music loving public with their virulent bickerings. Cæsar and Pompey did not excite the Romans to more violent partisanship than these contentious women.”
And now we see Handel bankrupt and superseded in another theatre by his two rivals, Porpora and then Hasse (1699–1783) of Hamburg. However, they too were unsuccessful.
On went Handel, writing operas and oratorios and conducting at special functions. His health snapped, but his will was so powerful that this forceful man recovered, and presented two more operas, which were not successful. In spite of all his failures and lack of tact, he had faithful friends who arranged a successful benefit concert in 1738 for him. At about the same time a statue was erected in Vauxhall Gardens, an honor never before paid to a living composer!
He composed, while writing for the stage all these years, twelve sonatas for violin or flute with figured bass, thirteen sonatas for two violins, oboes or flutes and bass, six concerti grossi, twenty organ concertos and twelve concertos for strings, many suites, fantasies and fugues for harpsichord and organ. It is difficult to understand how one brain could do all this!
After his ill success with the Italian Opera House, he gave up writing operas and devoted himself to oratorios. In thirteen years (1739–1752) he wrote nineteen. Among these are Saul in which is the famous “Dead March,” Joseph, and many other important ones, but towering over all The Messiah, and Heracles, which Romain Roland says is “one of the artistic summits of the 18th century.”
They are not all oratorios, for Heracles and several others are not religious in subject, but are dramatic epics.
Handel’s sight failed him, but even this did not stop his torrential activity to his death in 1759.
He had become an English subject, so was buried with pomp at Westminster Abbey.
He was loved even though he was fiery of temper, and had a will that no one could conquer.
His music is full of his gusts of feeling but always correct and his art perfect. In his work he always held himself under great control and it mirrors his power and balance. He loved wind instruments and people often considered his music noisy!
He wrote forty-two operas, two passions, ninety-four cantatas, ten pasticcios, serenatas, songs and the instrumental works mentioned above. The famous Handel Largo comes from one of his operas, Xerxes, and was an aria Ombra mai fu (Never was there a Shadow).
Handel used counterpoint, but always knew when to unbend and use delightful flowing melody, so he became popular.
Other men, Hasse, Telemann and Graun, contemporaries of Handel, followed the popular Italian models but without Handel’s genius for melody and sublimity, and were never heard of after their own generation had passed away.
Handel’s Messiah, which he wrote in twenty-four days, was first given in Dublin. It took the people by storm and when the king heard it, thrilled by the “Hallelujah Chorus,” he rose to his feet, and since then it is the custom to stand during that number. It has become the Christmas Oratorio and is sung in churches and societies all over the world. It has lost none of its first popularity among the people and is loved as few works have ever been. It thrills because it is sincere, big, and arouses religious feeling. Oratorio was his special gift to the world and one never hears the name of Handel without thinking of The Messiah.
Handel seemed to reunite the forms: oratorio and opera, under his massive will. At first some of his oratorios were given in costume, showing the influence of opera.
Handel had many enemies in England, but he also had friends. Although imperious, he had a sweet side, and made friends with humble folk who loved music, even though he hobnobbed with royalty. Thomas Britton, a coal heaver, his friend, is sketched by an artist of the day in a picture where Handel is playing The Harmonious Blacksmith to Alexander Pope, the Duchess of Queensbury, Colley Cibber and other famous folk. Yet he stormed at everyone and even royalty “quaked in their boots” and were forced to behave themselves at rehearsals and concerts which Handel directed.
Accused of using someone’s melody, he answered, “That pig couldn’t use such a melody as well as I could!” He helped himself to so many that he was called the “Great Plagiarist.”
His latter life was spent quietly, with a few intimate friends, drinking his beer and smoking his beloved pipe. He was always generous and as he grew older seemed to become kindlier and softer. He contributed largely to the Foundling Asylum and even played the organ there.
He wanted to die on Good Friday, “in hopes,” he said, “of meeting his good God, his sweet Lord and Saviour on the day of his resurrection,” and on Good Friday, April 6th, 1759, he died.
Now we come to the next genius, Christoph Gluck (1714–1787) born when George Frederick Handel was twenty-nine years old. He also attacked the frivolous drift of his time, but in another field from Handel and Bach, and gave the fashionable, aimless Italian opera its death blow for all time.
Gluck’s life is different from Handel, Bach, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven as you will see later when you have read about all of these. For, until he was almost forty years old, Gluck did nothing to make him great, whereas these other men showed from their earliest years that they were unusual.
Gluck belongs to two periods for his life bridges Bach’s and Haydn’s. You will see how he first belonged to the frivolous fashion-loving composers like Hasse, Jomelli and Piccinni, and how later he blossomed into the great renewer and constructor of opera and escapes into a class of his own! His is the most remarkable instance of a man who starts with an ordinary talent, and later in life grasps a vision that never came to him in his early youth and which was not caught by others in his day.
Furthermore he was able to carry his point and not merely see the vision and let it go by. But first let us see how his life unfolded, for a man’s life helps us to understand his works.
Christoph Willibald Gluck, born July 2nd, 1714, at Weidenwang, near Nüremberg, was the son of a gamekeeper, who moved from estate to estate in the service of princes and nobles, and at the time of Christoph’s birth, was ranger to Eugene, Prince of Savoy. So, this little boy destined to become the great Chevalier von Gluck, was a child of the people even as was Haydn and others.
When he was three years old he was taken to Bohemia, (now Czecho-Slovakia), for his father entered the service of Prince Lobkowitz, a great music lover, of whom you will hear again. His parents were quite poor, yet it is remarkable that above everything else they gave Christoph a good education and at twelve he went to a Jesuit school near Eisenberg, the home of Prince Lobkowitz.
Here he learned to sing and to play the organ, the violin, the ’cello and the clavier. He was diligent and became most proficient and was loved and admired by the school fathers. But little did they dream that some day he was to write classic operas, based not on Christian stories but the pagan dramas of the Greeks!
When nearly nineteen, he left the seminary and said good-bye to the Church of St. Ignatius and went to Prague. To support himself and to carry on his scientific and musical studies he gave lessons, played for rustic festivals and earned money the best way he could, until Prince Lobkowitz became interested in him and introduced him to the musical circle at court. Here he met Count Melzi who took him to Milan, where he was taught by Giovanni Battista Sammartini, a celebrated organist and teacher of counterpoint. After four years of study he completed his musical education.
In Milan, he wrote his first opera, Artaserse which was performed in 1741. Metastasio, the popular librettist, wrote the words to Artaserse, as he did for many of Gluck’s works written in the loose style of the Italian opera. He was now twenty-eight and in the five years spent here, he composed eight operas, through which he gained great popularity. But not yet had it come to him to revolutionize opera; he simply used the old pattern which was really nothing but groups of songs, recitatives and choruses having very little connection except to give the performers the chance to do musical feats to amaze the audience with their skill. The story of these operas, meagre as it was, stopped short, for some long and elaborate cadenza, and then it went on again with no thought of the meaning of the drama but rather to tickle the taste of the audience and the performer. The orchestra, too, was a step-child, for no one cared where it came in as long as it was politely subdued, keeping the singers on the key, and doing its best to be heard only when bidden. So, Gluck followed these ideas in the beginning and perhaps it was better that he did, otherwise he might never have realized how far opera had strayed from the ideals of Monteverde.
Having eight operas to his credit, he began to get commissions from other cities and countries, and next accepted an invitation, in 1745, to go to London as composer of opera at the Haymarket Theatre. In 1746 he wrote La Caduta de Giganti (The Fall of the Giants), with no doubt a libretto of Metastasio’s, then he gave his Artamene and was assisted in their production by Handel, who is supposed to have treated the works with contempt. He is said to have exclaimed, “Even my shoe-black can write better counterpoint than Gluck.” But we must remember that Gluck had not yet become the great Gluck. His visit to England was fruitful, for Gluck heard and digested the great oratorios of Handel, and realized that the voice and orchestra might be handled the same way in opera. No doubt his mission was beginning to dawn on him; it came, not as a great revelation, but gradually.
Another thing that gave him a push forward and shows how great people can make a success of failure: he was asked to write a pasticcio (Italian word meaning a meat-pie), or a string of melodies, very fashionable in his day. He strung together his best airs from his Italian operas, and called it Pyramus and Thisbe, but it was a dismal failure. “Ah, ha!” he must have thought, “why shouldn’t this musical drivel fail, for it is naught but trash, and with nothing that is needed to make a good literary drama.” So this was one of the experiences that led him to reform opera, making the words fit the music and not stopping a performance, so that a popular soloist could sing a meaningless trill and then start again with the other part of the word,—the way that opera was being written at that time.
After his London ups and downs he went to Paris and heard the operas of Rameau. He realized now the value of musical declamation and recitative to the meaning and action of opera if used with thought, and he was not slow in taking suggestions.
Gluck was probably the most all round man of his day, for he knew literature and science as did few musicians. He knew all the influential people in the arts, sciences, and music in London, Hamburg, Dresden and Vienna, and his home was a center of learned and delightful people. When in Vienna but a short time, he was commissioned to write an opera and he produced, with success, La Semiramide, after which he went to Copenhagen. His next opera Telemacco in which he began to work out his new ideas was well received, in Rome and Naples.
In 1750 after many disappointments, he was married to a lady he had long adored. They lived happily together, for Marriane Pergin not only brought him money which was a great joy, but was always his devoted and understanding help-mate. She was an accomplished woman, and a companion that many might envy. But, sad to say, they had no children, so they adopted a niece of Christoph’s, a lovely little girl with great musical talent. The three lived lovingly together until the poor little child sickened and died, making the Glucks most unhappy, for they adored her, as is often the case, even more than if she had been their own child.
In 1751 Gluck journeyed to Naples. Didn’t he travel a lot in the days of the stage coach and brigands! In the same year he became conductor to Prince Frederick at Vienna and in 1754 was officially attached to the opera, and Maria Theresa made him court chapel master.
Soon after, the Pope, pleased with what he had done in Rome, made him Chevalier of the Golden Spur and from that time he always styled himself Ritter (Chevalier) von Gluck.
In Il re pastore (The Shepherd King), we see the dawning of Gluck’s best period of writing (1756). The overture is better music than he had written before, and from this time on, Gluck became the genius in the opera world for which he is known. From 1756 to 1760 he lived apart from the world studying and after this he began to broadcast his ideas in writing and composing.
When the Archduke Joseph of Austria, afterwards the Emperor, married Isabella of Bourbon, Gluck wrote Tetede which was performed with great pomp. After this he wrote the ballet Don Giovanni, or The Libertine, particularly interesting, for it certainly gave Mozart an idea for his own great work Don Giovanni.
Again our “wandering minstrel” moved, this time to Bologna where he conducted a new opera which, strange to say, showed not a sign of his new ideas!
Soon he met Calzabigi, another librettist, with whom he wrote his first epoch-making opera Orpheus and Euridice. Although in some parts it is written like the older operas, he used many of his new ideas. The public at first were bewildered but they liked it. The next opera written with his new librettist was Alceste, so different was it, and so full of his best thought that the public did not like it. The pleasure-loving people went to be amused and heard music almost as serious as oratorio. It was austere, and its climax was not satisfactory. Yet it and Orpheus and Euridice mark the birth of music drama which Mozart and Wagner developed further.
In Orpheus and Euridice the chorus was an important part of the drama as it had been in the old Greek drama from which Gluck took many of his stories; and was not something dragged in to fill up space. Instead, too, of the over-embroidered arias they were simple and expressive, and the characters were real living beings, instead of figures on which to drape showy melodies. Naturally, the composers were jealous of him and went so far as to say that the principal singer had written Orpheus and Euridice.
Gluck said of his Alceste: “I seek to put music to its true purpose; that is, to support the poem, and thus to strengthen the expression of the feelings and the interest of the situation without interrupting the action.... In short, I have striven to abolish all those bad habits which sound reasoning and true taste have been struggling against now for so long in vain.” He abolished the unnecessary cadenza, a fancy, trilly part composed by the soloist himself and used just before the close of a piece. You will see in a later chapter how Beethoven dealt with it.
Happily Gluck and Calzabigi still continued working together and in 1770 he wrote Paride and Elena (Paris and Helen) which proved Gluck to be a writer of beautiful romantic song.
By now Vienna and Paris were enthusiastic about him, yet he was severely criticized because he dared to write and compose differently from everyone else. The adventurer into new paths must always expect trouble from those who have not caught up with him.
Now our traveler goes to Paris where he presents Iphigenia in Aulis. The story was taken from a play of the French dramatist Racine. Although this was the fourth work in Gluck’s new style it was not as good as the others. His enemies did their utmost to hurt him as they resented his coming into Paris to reform French opera. And as the musicians and singers were not good artists, it was almost impossible to give it well, and probably it would never have reached the stage had it not been for Marie Antoinette the French Queen who was later guillotined. She had been a real friend and pupil of Gluck, when a young princess in Vienna. Nevertheless the opera pleased its audiences, and it paid well, and Gluck was given a new court office in Vienna.
In 1776 the trouble that had been brewing with Gluck’s opponents came to a climax. Piccinni was his great Italian rival and the city of Paris was torn as to who was the better composer. All the literary men and the court were divided into factions, one for and one against Gluck. Some great men, including Jean Jacques Rousseau were Gluckists, while others of importance were Piccinnists. Never had there been so great a contention for musical glory or struggle against new ideas. It was a most extraordinary thing, but it does show that there was great musical interest or people would never have wasted so much time in argument and in writing for or against these men. Finally it came to a head, and it was decided to give them both the same libretto of Iphigenia in Tauris to see who could write the better opera. Gluck completed his within the year and after nearly three years, Piccinni finished his. They were both performed and needless to say Gluck won the award and even Piccinni said himself that Gluck’s was the better. It is nice to know that after Gluck’s death, Piccinni tried to collect funds to raise a memorial as a tribute to him! So artistic rivalry need not dim admiration.
In Iphigenia in Tauris again the master rises to great heights. His overture was splendid, his orchestral color was superb. He pictured the different characteristics of the various groups of people and of the individuals themselves in word and music as it never had been done before.
He wrote Armide in 1777. It did not succeed although it was very lovely and dreamy and in it, he suggested the sounds of babbling brooks and the song of the nightingales.
Gluck wrote thirty operas, seven of which are in his new style: Don Giovanni, Orpheus and Euridice, Paris and Helen, Alceste, Iphigenia in Tauris, Iphigenia in Aulis and Armide.
And thus this great path-breaker advanced opera seria (grand opera).
The old sinfonia in three movements which opened the opera, disappeared, and instead came the introduction or overture, suggesting the opera itself. He taught and wrote that composers could do anything to assist the action of the opera; he elevated the story to an important place; the characters in the plot were thought of as people and not as puppets, and they were studied individually and not as machinery only. The situations in the story governed the kind of music he used and he tried hard to make the orchestra a main part of the opera. It seems odd that nobody had thought of this before. Yet you have seen how much time had been given to the voice throughout the ages, and how long it had taken instruments to arrive at their full importance. So we see Gluck improving as he worked with a better librettist. From now the opera writer had to use thought in composition, as he would in writing a play.
But Gluck had trouble with the singers on account of his innovations. He was the crossest conductor of his time, would allow no one to dictate to him, and scolded the singers as they had never been scolded before.
He must have looked droll conducting, for he used to take off his wig during rehearsals, and wrap a cloth about his head to keep the draughts from fanning him! He would rage if the singers tried to do what they had been permitted to do in other operas! Some singers demanded extra pay when Gluck conducted. Sometimes he would repeat a passage twenty or thirty times and no pianissimo was soft enough and no fortissimo loud enough! Someone said of him while he was conducting, “He lives and dies with his heroines, he rages with Achilles, weeps with Iphigenia and in the dying scene of Alceste throws himself back in his chair and becomes as a corpse.”
Otherwise he was always the kind soul who attracted everybody from Marie Antoinette down. She used to receive him in her boudoir so that they could enjoy conversation without court formalities.
One day two prima donnas refused to obey him when rehearsing Iphigenia, and he said: “Mesdemoiselles, I have been summoned here to Paris especially to produce Iphigenia. If you sing, well and good, but if not, that is your business; only I shall then seek an audience with the Queen, and inform her that the opera cannot be performed, and I shall put myself into my carriage and straightway leave for Vienna.” You may know that the ladies did their best!
In closing let us tell you what Berlioz, a master of orchestration, said of Gluck’s orchestration in Alceste: “Of its kind I know nothing more dramatic, nothing more terror-inspiring.” And this was said of a man who had only the simplest orchestra with which to work. After much fighting, he was the first to introduce into the orchestra the kettle-drums and cymbals, which moderns have used with grandeur.
Gluck lived to see his own success, but the Piccinni strife and the jealousies may have weakened his constitution, for he died rather suddenly in 1787, a few weeks after the first performance of Mozart’s Don Giovanni.
There are many memorials in Europe to Gluck, not the least being his bust which stands beside Lully and Rameau in the Grand Opera of Paris.
It is very hard to realize that time was when there were no public concerts. Music was confined for so many centuries to the churches, to the public squares, to the King’s Chamber, or to the ball rooms of wealthy nobles, that it had not become the democratic art that it is now. Of course the first opera houses in Italy had been steps in the direction of bringing music to the people. The concerts begun by the Danish organist, Buxtehude, in Lübeck about 1673, and the Tonkünstler-societät in Vienna of the same period were the first public concerts. In England, John Banister started concerts at about the same time, which were the first to admit an audience by payment of a fee. Handel’s friend, Thomas Britton, the coal-heaver, gave concerts at his home for 10 shillings the series!
The 18th century saw a great development in giving public concerts. In France, the Concerts Spirituels were begun in 1725. The object of these were to give music to the people on the days of religious festivals when the opera house was closed. There were about 24 concerts a year; the political events of 1791 put an end to the society but it had already given the people a taste for concerts, and many new societies grew out of it. The festivals of Three Choirs in West England (see page 190) were founded in 1724, and the Academy of Ancient Music in 1710. The Musikverein in Leipsic was founded in 1743 and was later turned into the famous Gewandhaus concerts in 1781.
This movement for public concerts went hand in hand with the development of instruments and the perfecting of performers. In fact the word concert came from “consort—the union or symphony of various instruments playing in concert to one tune.”
The symphony came to life in Germany. Paul Landormy in his History of Music tells us that it was the time of the “poor scholars” who were educated free from expense in the schools with the understanding that they were to learn the “musician’s trade” and take part in the concerts organized by the cities and the courts. Thus symphony orchestras grew up all over Germany,—Munich, Stuttgart, Dresden, Darmstadt, Hamburg where Telemann conducted, in Leipsic, Berlin and Mannheim.
In Mannheim appeared the most important group of composers, known as the Mannheim School, and many wrote the early symphonies which led from the works of Bach to those of Haydn and Mozart. The best known of these composers are: Johann Stamitz (1717–1757), Franz Xavier Richter (1709–1789), Anton Filtz, Christian Cannabich, Ignaz Holzbauer, Ernst Eichner and Giovanni Battista Toeschi. Under the direct influence of the Mannheim School were: François Joseph Gossec (1734–1829), a Belgian living in Paris who wrote many symphonies; Luigi Boccherini (1743–1805) known as one of the first writers of chamber music in the form used by the classic writers; Giovanni Battista Sammartini (1701–1775) of Milan; the sons of Bach, Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf, and Joseph and Michael Haydn.