CHAPTER VII

COMBINATION OF OLD METHODs and new

PRINCIPLES

THE development of principles of design in music must inevitably wait upon the development of technique. Very little can be done with limited means of performance; and the adequacy of such means is dependent on the previous perfecting of various instruments, and on the discovery of the particular types of expression and figure which are adapted to them. One of the reasons why instrumental music lagged behind other branches of art was, that men were slow in finding out the arts of execution; and even when the stock of figures and phrases which were adapted to various instruments had become plentiful, it took composers some time to assimilate them sufficiently, so as to have them always ready at hand to apply to the purposes of art when composing. It was this which gave performers so great an advantage in the early days, and accounts for the fact that all the great composers of organ music in early days were famous organists, and all the successful composers of violin music were brilliant public performers. In modern times it is necessarily rather the reverse, and some of the greatest of recent composers have been famous for anything rather than for their powers as executants.

But though form is so dependent upon technique of every kind, the development of both went on in early days more or less simultaneously. The management and disposition of the materials and subjects used by the composer is all part of the business of designing, and while the violinists and organists were devising their types of figure they learnt to fit them together in schemes which had the necessary general

good effect as well as the special telling effect in detail; and all branches of art contributed something of their share towards the sum total of advance in art generally. But the various methods and resources of art were developed in connection with the different departments in which they were most immediately required. Composers found out what voices could do and what they could not do in writing their church music, oratorios, cantatas, and so forth. They studied the forms of expression and melody best suited for solo voices in operas and cantatas, and they studied the effects and forms of figure which were best adapted to various instruments, and found out by slow degrees the effects which could be produced by various instruments in combination when they were trying to write sonatas, suites, concertos, and overtures. Each genuine composer then as now added his mite to the resources of growing art when he managed to do something new. in those days, when the field had not been so over-cultivated, it was easier to turn up new ground, and to add something both effectual and wholesome to the sum of artistic products than it became in later times.

And

It must not be overlooked that all branches of art became more and more interdependent as musical development went on. Opera and oratorio required instrumental music as well as solo and choral music, and instrumental music had to borrow types of melody and expression as well as types of design from choral and solo music. Hence it followed that each department of music could only go ahead of others in those respects which were absolutely within its own range; and there were several occasions in the history of art when a special branch came to a standstill for a time because the development of other branches upon which it had to draw for further advance was in a backward state. This was mainly the reason why opera, which was cultivated with such special activity in the seventeenth century, came practically to a standstill for some time at the point illustrated by Scarlatti and Lulli. The actual internal organisation of the component parts, such as the arias, improved immensely in style and richness and scope as men gained better hold of principles of melodic development; and

Handel and Hasse and Buononcini, and many others, improved in that respect on the types of their predecessors. But the general scheme of opera stood much where it was, and the best operas produced in the next fifty years (even those by Handel) are not in the least degree more capable of being endured as wholes by a modern audience than those of Lulli and Scarlatti.

As has before been pointed out, the early representatives of the new style of music had been extremely inefficient in choral writing, because they thought that the methods an learning of the old school were superfluous for their purposes. But in the course of about fifty years musicians found the need of again studying and gathering the fruits of the experience of earlier generations, and something of the old choral style was revived. However, by that time men's minds were thoroughly well set in the direction of modern tonality and harmonic form as distinct from the melodic modes and essentially contrapuntal texture of the earlier art, and the result was that the old contrapuntal methods were adapted to new conditions when they came into use again; and this made them capable of serving for new kinds of expression and effect. The old methods were resumed under the influence of the new feeling for tonality. Composers began anew to write free and characteristic parts for the several voices in choral combinations, but they made the harmonies, which were the sum of the combined counterpoints, move so as to illustrate the principles of harmonic form, and thus gave to the hearer the sense of orderliness and design, as well as the sense of contrapuntal complexity. And it is not too much to say that their attitude soon changed the principle of their work. Where formerly they had simply adapted melody to melody, they now often thought first of the progression of the harmony, and made separate voice-parts run so as to gain points of vantage in the successive chords. In the old state of things counterpoint sometimes appeared, chiefly by accident, in the guise of harmony; in the new style simple harmonic successions were made deliberately to look like good counterpoint.

This was partly the result of the peculiar disposition of the

Italians. They attained to very considerable skill in manipu lating voice-parts smoothly and vocally, but they were not particularly ardent after technical artistic interest or characteristic expression. Their sense of beauty shows itself in the orderliness and ease of their harmonic progressions, and in the excellent art with which general variety is obtained. But as usual a certain native indolence and dislike of strenuous concentration made them incline too much towards methods which lessened the demands upon the attention of audiences. They preferred that the design of an enormous number of movements should be exactly the same, and commonplace and obvious as well, rather than that they should have any difficulty in following and understanding what they listened to. The result was favourable to the establishment of formal principles in choral music, but it put a premium on carelessness in the carrying out of detail and in the choice of musical material; and the result was that composers got their effects as cheaply as they could, and too often fell into the habit of writing mere successions of chords without either melody or independent part-writing, trusting to the massive sound of many voices in chorus for their effect. But, granting these drawbacks, it may well be conceded that the Italians were pioneers in this new style of choral writing, as they were in most other things; and both in the direction of harmonic form in choral works and in the new style of counterpoint they did invaluable service to art.

Another new feature of this phase of choral music was its combination with instrumental music. In the old order of things the instruments had sometimes doubled the voices, but very little attempt had been made to use the instrumental forces as independent means of effect. The new mode of combining voices and instruments made a very great difference to the freedom with which the voices could be treated, and to the effect of form and expression which could be obtained. But at the same time it is important to note that the instrumental element was still very much in the background, and did not in any sense divide the honours with the choral effects, The instrumental forces were accessories or vassals, not equals.

Even the most responsible masters were forced by the backwardness of instrumental art to adopt a contrapuntal style for their orchestral works, and to write for their several instruments as if they were so many voice-parts; and when they attempted variety of colour they used it in broad homogeneous expanses, such as long solos for special wind instruments. The sense for variety of colour was undoubtedly dawning, but as yet composers had to produce their impression with very moderate use of it.

The result was a paradoxical vindication of the inevitable continuity of artistic as of all other kinds of human progress. For although the first beginnings of the new movement were prominently secular, and diverged from the traditions of church music, the first really great and permanent achievements in the new style were on the lines of sacred and serious art, because it was in that line alone that composers could gain full advantage from the old traditions. And whereas the early representatives of the new style had cast aside the study of choral methods, it was in their choral aspects that these oratorios were specially complete and mature. But it did not fall to the Italians to bring these new experiments to full fruit.

It was indeed the first time that the Teutonic temper found full expression in the art which now seems most congenial to the race. Through various causes German progress in music had so far been hindered. While the Netherlands, England, Italy, and even France, had each had important groups of composers, Germany had as yet had but few and more or less isolated representatives. But now that social conditions had quieted down, and the spirit of the nation had better opportunity to expand, her composers rose with extraordinary rapidity to the foremost place, and in their hands comparatively neglected forms of art, such as the oratorio and church cantata, reached the highest standard of which they have. proved capable. All the German composers undoubtedly learned much of their business from Italian examples; and it is noteworthy that on this occasion, as on many others, the composers who were the most popularly successful adopted