How to Listen to Music 9 – Krehbiel · Verses Across
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How to Listen to Music 9Chapter 8
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Literature · Music
How to Listen to Music 9
Chapter 8
KrehbielEnglish
Choirs and Choral Music
Choirs a touchstone of culture.
The value of choir singing.
No one would go far astray who should estimate the extent and sincerity of a community's musical culture by the number of its chorus singers. Some years ago it was said that over three hundred cities and towns in Germany contained singing societies and orchestras devoted to the cultivation of choral music. In the United States, where there are comparatively a small number of instrumental musicians, there has been a wonderful development of singing societies within the last generation, and it is to this fact largely that the notable growth in the country's knowledge and appreciation of high-class music is due. No amount of mere hearing and study can compare in influence with participation in musical performance. Music is an art which rests on love. It is beautiful sound vitalized by feeling, and it can only be grasped fully through man's emotional nature. There is no quicker or surer way to get to the heart of a composition than by performing it, and since participation in chorus singing is of necessity unselfish and creative of sympathy, there is no better medium of musical culture than membership in a choir. It was because he realized this that Schumann gave the advice to all students of music: "Sing diligently in choirs; especially the middle voices, for this will make you musical."
Singing societies and orchestras.
Neither numbers nor wealth necessary.
There is no community so small or so ill-conditioned that it cannot maintain a singing society. Before a city can give sustenance to even a small body of instrumentalists it must be large enough and rich enough to maintain a theatre from which those instrumentalists can derive their support. There can be no dependence upon amateurs, for people do not study the oboe, bassoon, trombone, or double-bass for amusement. Amateur violinists and amateur flautists there are in plenty, but not amateur clarinetists and French-horn players; but if the love for music exists in a community, a dozen families shall suffice to maintain a choral club. Large numbers are therefore not essential; neither is wealth. Some of the largest and finest choirs in the world flourish among the Welsh miners in the United States and Wales, fostered by a native love for the art and the national institution called Eisteddfod.
Lines of choral culture in the United States.
The lines on which choral culture has proceeded in the United States are two, of which the more valuable, from an artistic point of view, is that of the oratorio, which went out from New England. The other originated in the German cultivation of the Maennergesang, the importance of which is felt more in the extent of the culture, prompted as it is largely by social considerations, than in the music sung, which is of necessity of a lower grade than that composed for mixed voices. It is chiefly in the impulse which German Maennergesang carried into all the corners of the land, and especially the impetus which the festivals of the German singers gave to the sections in which they have been held for half a century, that this form of culture is interesting.
Church and oratorio.
Secular choirs.
The cultivation of oratorio music sprang naturally from the Church, and though it is now chiefly in the hands of secular societies, the biblical origin of the vast majority of the texts used in the works which are performed, and more especially the regular performances of Handel's "Messiah" in the Christmastide, have left the notion, more or less distinct, in the public mind, that oratorios are religious functions. Nevertheless (or perhaps because of this fact) the most successful choral concerts in the United States are those given by oratorio societies. The cultivation of choral music which is secular in character is chiefly in the hands of small organizations, whose concerts are of a semi-private nature and are enjoyed by the associate members and invited guests. This circumstance is deserving of notice as a characteristic feature of choral music in America, though it has no particular bearing upon this study, which must concern itself with choral organizations, choral music, and choral performances in general.
Amateur choirs originated in the United States.
The size of old choirs.
Organizations of the kind in view differ from instrumental in being composed of amateurs; and amateur choir-singing is no older anywhere than in the United States. Two centuries ago and more the singing of catches and glees was a common amusement among the gentler classes in England, but the performances of the larger forms of choral music were in the hands of professional choristers who were connected with churches, theatres, schools, and other public institutions. Naturally, then, the choral bodies were small. Choirs of hundreds and thousands, such as take part in the festivals of to-day, are a product of a later time.
Handel's choirs.
"When Bach and Handel wrote their Passions, Church Cantatas, and Oratorios, they could only dream of such majestic performances as those works receive now; and it is one of the miracles of art that they should have written in so masterly a manner for forces that they could never hope to control. Who would think, when listening to the 'Hallelujah' of 'The Messiah,' or the great double choruses of 'Israel in Egypt,' in which the voice of the composer is 'as the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of many thunderings, saying, "Alleluia, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth!"' that these colossal compositions were never heard by Handel from any chorus larger than the most modest of our church choirs? At the last performance of 'The Messiah' at which Handel was advertised to appear (it was for the benefit of his favorite charity, the Foundling Hospital, on May 3, 1759--he died before the time, however), the singers, including principals, numbered twenty-three, while the instrumentalists numbered thirty-three. At the first great Handel Commemoration, in Westminster Abbey, in 1784, the choir numbered two hundred and seventy-five, the band two hundred and fifty; and this was the most numerous force ever gathered together for a single performance in England up to that time.
Choirs a century ago.
Bach's choir.
"In 1791 the Commemoration was celebrated by a choir of five hundred and a band of three hundred and seventy-five. In May, 1786, Johann Adam Hiller, one of Bach's successors as cantor of the St. Thomas School in Leipsic, directed what was termed a Massenauffuehrung of 'The Messiah,' in the Domkirche, in Berlin. His 'masses' consisted of one hundred and eighteen singers and one hundred and eighty-six instrumentalists. In Handel's operas, and sometimes even in his oratorios, the tutti meant, in his time, little more than a union of all the solo singers; and even Bach's Passion music and church cantatas, which seem as much designed for numbers as the double choruses of 'Israel,' were rendered in the St. Thomas Church by a ludicrously small choir. Of this fact a record is preserved in the archives of Leipsic. In August, 1730, Bach submitted to the authorities a plan for a church choir of the pupils in his care. In this plan his singers numbered twelve, there being one principal and two ripienists in each voice; with characteristic modesty he barely suggests a preference for sixteen. The circumstance that in the same document he asked for at least eighteen instrumentalists (two more if flutes were used), taken in connection with the figures given relative to the 'Messiah' performances, gives an insight into the relations between the vocal and the instrumental parts of a choral performance in those days."
Proportion of voices and instruments.
This relation has been more than reversed since then, the orchestras at modern oratorio performances seldom being one-fifth as large as the choir. This difference, however, is due largely to the changed character of modern music, that of to-day treating the instruments as independent agents of expression instead of using them chiefly to support the voices and add sonority to the tonal mass, as was done by Handel and most of the composers of his day.
Glee unions and male choirs.
I omit from consideration the Glee Unions of England, and the quartets, which correspond to them, in this country. They are not cultivators of choral music, and the music which they sing is an insignificant factor in culture. The male choirs, too, need not detain us long, since it may be said without injustice that their mission is more social than artistic. In these choirs the subdivision into parts is, as a rule, into two tenor voices, first and second, and two bass, first and second. In the glee unions, the effect of whose singing is fairly well imitated by the college clubs of the United States (pitiful things, indeed, from an artistic point of view), there is a survival of an old element in the male alto singing above the melody voice, generally in a painful falsetto. This abomination is unknown to the German part-songs for men's voices, which are written normally, but are in the long run monotonous in color for want of the variety in timbre and register which the female voices contribute in a mixed choir.
Women's choirs.
There are choirs also composed exclusively of women, but they are even more unsatisfactory than the male choirs, for the reason that the absence of the bass voice leaves their harmony without sufficient foundation. Generally, music for these choirs is written for three parts, two sopranos and contralto, with the result that it hovers, suspended like Mahomet's coffin, between heaven and earth. When a fourth part is added it is a second contralto, which is generally carried down to the tones that are hollow and unnatural.
Boys' choirs.
The substitution of boys for women in Episcopal Church choirs has grown extensively within the last ten years in the United States, very much to the promotion of aesthetic sentimentality in the congregations, but without improving the character of worship-music. Boys' voices are practically limitless in an upward direction, and are naturally clear and penetrating. Ravishing effects can be produced with them, but it is false art to use passionless voices in music conceived for the mature and emotional voices of adults; and very little of the old English Cathedral music, written for choirs of boys and men, is preserved in the service lists to-day.
Mixed choirs.
The only satisfactory choirs are the mixed choirs of men and women. Upon them has devolved the cultivation of artistic choral music in our public concert-rooms. As we know such choirs now, they are of comparatively recent origin, and it is a singular commentary upon the way in which musical history is written, that the fact should have so long been overlooked that the credit of organizing the first belongs to the United States. A little reflection will show this fact, which seems somewhat startling at first blush, to be entirely natural. Large singing societies are of necessity made up of amateurs, and the want of professional musicians in America compelled the people to enlist amateurs at a time when in Europe choral activity rested on the church, theatre, and institute choristers, who were practically professionals.
Origin of amateur singing societies.
The German record.
American priority.
The American record.
As the hitherto accepted record stands, the first amateur singing society was the Singakademie of Berlin, which Carl Friedrich Fasch, accompanist to the royal flautist, Frederick the Great, called into existence in 1791. A few dates will show how slow the other cities of musical Germany were in following Berlin's example. In 1818 there were only ten amateur choirs in all Germany. Leipsic organized one in 1800, Stettin in 1800, Muenster in 1804, Dresden in 1807, Potsdam in 1814, Bremen in 1815, Chemnitz in 1817, Schwaebisch-Hall in 1817, and Innsbruck in 1818. The Berlin Singakademie is still in existence, but so also is the Stoughton Musical Society in Stoughton, Mass., which was founded on November 7, 1786. Mr. Charles C. Perkins, historian of the Handel and Haydn Society, whose foundation was coincident with the sixth society in Germany (Bremen, 1815), enumerates the following predecessors of that venerable organization: the Stoughton Musical Society, 1786; Independent Musical Society, "established at Boston in the same year, which gave a concert at King's Chapel in 1788, and took part there in commemorating the death of Washington (December 14, 1799) on his first succeeding birthday;" the Franklin, 1804; the Salem, 1806; Massachusetts Musical, 1807; Lock Hospital, 1812, and the Norfolk Musical, the date of whose foundation is not given by Mr. Perkins.
Choirs in the West.
When the Bremen Singakademie was organized there were already choirs in the United States as far west as Cincinnati. In that city they were merely church choirs at first, but within a few years they had combined into a large body and were giving concerts at which some of the choruses of Handel and Haydn were sung. That their performances, as well as those of the New England societies, were cruder than those of their European rivals may well be believed, but with this I have nothing to do. I am simply seeking to establish the priority of the United States in amateur choral culture. The number of American cities in which oratorios are performed annually is now about fifty.
The size of choirs.
Large numbers not essential.
How "divisions" used to be sung.
In size mixed choirs ordinarily range from forty voices to five hundred. It were well if it were understood by choristers as well as the public that numbers merely are not a sign of merit in a singing society. So the concert-room be not too large, a choir of sixty well-trained voices is large enough to perform almost everything in choral literature with good effect, and the majority of the best compositions will sound better under such circumstances than in large rooms with large choirs. Especially is this true of the music of the Middle Ages, written for voices without instrumental accompaniment, of which I shall have something to say when the discussion reaches choral programmes. There is music, it is true, like much of Handel's, the impressiveness of which is greatly enhanced by masses, but it is not extensive enough to justify the sacrifice of correctness and finish in the performance to mere volume. The use of large choirs has had the effect of developing the skilfulness of amateur singers in an astonishing degree, but there is, nevertheless, a point where weightiness of tone becomes an obstacle to finished execution. When Mozart remodelled Handel's "Messiah" he was careful to indicate that the florid passages ("divisions" they used to be called in England) should be sung by the solo voices alone, but nowadays choirs of five hundred voices attack such choruses as "For unto us a Child is Born," without the slightest hesitation, even if they sometimes make a mournful mess of the "divisions."
The division of choirs.
Five-part music.
Eight part.
Antiphonal music.
Bach's "St. Matthew Passion."
The normal division of a mixed choir is into four parts or voices--soprano, contralto, tenor, and bass; but composers sometimes write for more parts, and the choir is subdivided to correspond. The custom of writing for five, six, eight, ten, and even more voices was more common in the Middle Ages, the palmy days of the a capella (i.e., for the chapel, unaccompanied) style than it is now, and, as a rule, a division into more than four voices is not needed outside of the societies which cultivate this old music, such as the Musical Art Society in New York, the Bach Choir in London, and the Domchor in Berlin. In music for five parts, one of the upper voices, soprano or tenor, is generally doubled; for six, the ordinary distribution is into two sopranos, two contraltos, tenor, and bass. When eight voices are reached a distinction is made according as there are to be eight real parts (a otto voci reali), or two choruses of the four normal parts each (a otto voci in due cori reali). In the first instance the arrangement commonly is three sopranos, two contraltos, two tenors, and one bass. One of the most beautiful uses of the double choir is to produce antiphonal effects, choir answering to choir, both occasionally uniting in the climaxes. How stirring this effect can be made may be observed in some of Bach's compositions, especially those in which he makes the division of the choir subserve a dramatic purpose, as in the first chorus of "The Passion according to St. Matthew," where the two choirs, one representing Daughters of Zion, the other Believers, interrogate and answer each other thus:
I. "Come, ye daughters, weep for anguish;
See Him!
II. "Whom?
I. "The Son of Man.
See Him!
II. "How?
I. "So like a lamb.
See it!
II. "What?
I. "His love untold.
Look!
II. "Look where?
I. "Our guilt behold."
Antiphony in a motet.
Another most striking instance is in the same master's motet, "Sing ye to the Lord," which is written for two choirs of four parts each. (In the example from the "St. Matthew Passion" there is a third choir of soprano voices which sings a chorale while the dramatic choirs are conversing.) In the motet the first choir begins a fugue, in the midst of which the second choir is heard shouting jubilantly, "Sing ye! Sing ye! Sing ye!" Then the choirs change roles, the first delivering the injunction, the second singing the fugue. In modern music, composers frequently consort a quartet of solo voices, soprano, contralto, tenor, and bass, with a four-part chorus, and thus achieve fine effects of contrast in dynamics and color, as well as antiphonal.
Excellence in choral singing.
Community of action.
Individualism.
Dynamics.
Beauty of tone.
Contralto voices.
The question is near: What constitutes excellence in a choral performance? To answer: The same qualities that constitute excellence in an orchestral performance, will scarcely suffice, except as a generalization. A higher degree of harmonious action is exacted of a body of singers than of a body of instrumentalists. Many of the parts in a symphony are played by a single instrument. Community of voice belongs only to each of the five bodies of string-players. In a chorus there are from twelve to one hundred and fifty voices, or even more, united in each part. This demands the effacement of individuality in a chorus, upon the assertion of which, in a band, under the judicious guidance of the conductor, many of the effects of color and expression depend. Each group in a choir must strive for homogeneity of voice quality; each singer must sink the ego in the aggregation, yet employ it in its highest potency so far as the mastery of the technics of singing is concerned. In cultivating precision of attack (i.e., promptness in beginning a tone and leaving it off), purity of intonation (i.e., accuracy or justness of pitch--"singing in tune" according to the popular phrase), clearness of enunciation, and careful attention to all the dynamic gradations of tone, from very soft up to very loud, and all shades of expression between, in the development of that gradual augmentation of tone called crescendo, and the gradual diminution called diminuendo, the highest order of individual skill is exacted from every chorister; for upon individual perfection in these things depends the collective effect which it is the purpose of the conductor to achieve. Sensuous beauty of tone, even in large aggregations, is also dependent to a great degree upon careful and proper emission of voice by each individual, and it is because the contralto part in most choral music, being a middle part, lies so easily in the voices of the singers that the contralto contingent in American choirs, especially, so often attracts attention by the charm of its tone. Contralto voices are seldom forced into the regions which compel so great a physical strain that beauty and character must be sacrificed to mere accomplishment of utterance, as is frequently the case with the soprano part.
Selfishness fatal to success.
Tonal balance.
Yet back of all this exercise of individual skill there must be a spirit of self-sacrifice which can only exist in effective potency if prompted by universal sympathy and love for the art. A selfish chorister is not a chorister, though possessed of the voice of a Melba or Mario. Balance between the parts, not only in the fundamental constitution of the choir but also in all stages of a performance, is also a matter of the highest consideration. In urban communities, especially, it is difficult to secure perfect tonal symmetry--the rule is a poverty in tenor voices--but those who go to hear choral concerts are entitled to hear a well-balanced choir, and the presence of an army of sopranos will not condone a squad of tenors. Again, I say, better a well-balanced small choir than an ill-balanced large one.
Declamation.
Expression.
The choruses in "The Messiah."
Variety of declamation in Handel's oratorio.
I have not enumerated all the elements which enter into a meritorious performance, nor shall I discuss them all; only in passing do I wish to direct attention to one which shines by its absence in the choral performances not only of America but also of Great Britain and Germany. Proper pronunciation of the texts is an obvious requirement; so ought also to be declamation. There is no reason why characteristic expression, by which I mean expression which goes to the genius of the melodic phrase when it springs from the verbal, should be ignored, simply because it may be difficult of attainment from large bodies of singers. There is so much monotony in oratorio concerts because all oratorios and all parts of any single oratorio are sung alike. Only when the "Hallelujah" is sung in "The Messiah" at the gracious Christmastide is an exaltation above the dull level of the routine performances noticeable, and then it is communicated to the singers by the act of the listeners in rising to their feet. Now, despite the structural sameness in the choruses of "The Messiah," they have a great variety of content, and if the characteristic physiognomy of each could but be disclosed, the grand old work, which seems hackneyed to so many, would acquire amazing freshness, eloquence, and power. Then should we be privileged to note that there is ample variety in the voice of the old master, of whom a greater than he said that when he wished, he could strike like a thunderbolt. Then should we hear the tones of amazed adoration in
[Music illustration: Be-hold the Lamb of God!]
of cruel scorn in
[Music illustration: He trust-ed in God that would de-li-ver Him, let him de-li-ver him if he de-light in him.]
of boastfulness and conscious strength in
[Music illustration: Let us break their bonds a-sun-der.]
and learn to admire as we ought to admire the declamatory strength and truthfulness so common in Handel's choruses.
Mediaeval music.
Madrigals.
There is very little cultivation of choral music of the early ecclesiastical type, and that little is limited to the Church and a few choirs specially organized for its performance, like those that I have mentioned. This music is so foreign to the conceptions of the ordinary amateur, and exacts so much skill in the singing of the intervals, lacking the prop of modern tonality as it does, that it is seldom that an amateur body can be found equal to its performance. Moreover, it is nearly all of a solemn type. Its composers were churchmen, and when it was written nearly all that there was of artistic music was in the service of the Church. The secular music of the time consisted chiefly in Madrigals, which differed from ecclesiastical music only in their texts, they being generally erotic in sentiment. The choristers of to-day, no less than the public, find it difficult to appreciate them, because they are not melodic in the sense that most music is nowadays. In them the melody is not the privileged possession of the soprano voice. All the voices stand on an equal footing, and the composition consists of a weaving together, according to scientific rules, of a number of voices--counterpoint as it is called.
Homophonic hymns.
Calvin's restrictive influence.
Our hymn-tunes are homophonic, based upon a melody sung by one voice, for which the other voices provide the harmony. This style of music came into the Church through the German Reformation. Though Calvin was a lover of music he restricted its practice among his followers to unisonal psalmody, that is, to certain tunes adapted to the versified psalms sung without accompaniment of harmony voices. On the adoption of the Genevan psalter he gave the strictest injunction that neither its text nor its melodies were to be altered.
"Those songs and melodies," said he, "which are composed for the mere pleasure of the ear, and all they call ornamental music, and songs for four parts, do not behoove the majesty of the Church, and cannot fail greatly to displease God."
Luther and the German Church.
Under the influence of the German reformers music was in a very different case. Luther was not only an amateur musician, he was also an ardent lover of scientific music. Josquin des Pres, a contemporary of Columbus, was his greatest admiration; nevertheless, he was anxious from the beginning of his work of Church establishment to have the music of the German Church German in spirit and style. In 1525 he wrote:
A German mass.
"I should like to have a German mass, and I am indeed at work on one; but I am anxious that it shall be truly German in manner. I have no objection to a translated Latin text and Latin notes; but they are neither proper nor just (aber es lautet nicht artig noch rechtschaffen); text and notes, accent, melodies, and demeanor must come from our mother tongue and voice, else will it all be but a mimicry, like that of the apes."
Secular tunes used.
Congregational singing.
In the Church music of the time, composed, as I have described, by a scientific interweaving of voices, the composers had got into the habit of utilizing secular melodies as the foundation on which to build their contrapuntal structures. I have no doubt that it was the spirit which speaks out of Luther's words which brought it to pass that in Germany contrapuntal music with popular melodies as foundations developed into the chorale, in which the melody and not the counterpoint was the essential thing. With the Lutheran Church came congregational singing; with congregational singing the need of a new style of composition, which should not only make the participation of the people in the singing possible, but should also stimulate them to sing by freeing the familiar melodies (the melodies of folk-songs) from the elaborate and ingenious, but soulless, counterpoint which fettered them.
Counterpoint.
The first congregational hymns.
The Flemish masters, who were the musical law-givers, had been using secular tunes for over a century, but only as stalking-horses for counterpoint; and when the Germans began to use their tunes, they, too, buried them beyond recognition in the contrapuntal mass. The people were invited to sing paraphrases of the psalms to familiar tunes, it is true, but the choir's polyphony went far to stifle the spirit of the melody. Soon the free spirit which I have repeatedly referred to as Romanticism, and which was powerfully encouraged by the Reformation, prompted a style of composition in which the admired melody was lifted into relief. This could not be done until the new style of writing invented by the creators of the opera (see Chapter VII.) came in, but as early as 1568 Dr. Lucas Ostrander published fifty hymns and psalms with music so arranged "that the congregation may join in singing them." This, then, is in outline the story of the beginning of modern hymnology, and it is recalled to the patrons of choral concerts whenever in Bach's "Passion Music" or in Mendelssohn's "St. Paul" the choir sings one of the marvellous old hymns of the German Church.
The Church and conservatism.
Harmony and emotion.
Choral music being bound up with the Church, it has naturally participated in the conservatism characteristic of the Church. The severe old style has survived in the choral compositions of to-day, while instrumental music has grown to be almost a new thing within the century which is just closing. It is the severe style established by Bach, however, not that of Palestrina. In the Church compositions prior to Palestrina the emotional power of harmony was but little understood. The harmonies, indeed, were the accidents of the interweaving of melodies. Palestrina was among the first to feel the uplifting effect which might result from a simple sequence of pure consonant harmonies, and the three chords which open his famous "Stabat Mater"
Palestrina's "Stabat Mater."
Characteristics of his music.
[Music illustration: Sta-bat ma-ter]
are a sign of his style as distinct in its way as the devices by means of which Wagner stamps his individuality on his phrases. His melodies, too, compared with the artificial motivi of his predecessors, are distinguished by grace, beauty, and expressiveness, while his command of aetherial effects, due to the manner in which the voices are combined, is absolutely without parallel from his day to this. Of the mystery of pure beauty he enjoyed a wonderful revelation, and has handed it down to us in such works as the "Stabat Mater," "Missa Papae Marcelli," and the "Improperia."
Palestrina's music not dramatic.
A churchman.
Effect of the Reformation.
This music must not be listened to with the notion in mind of dramatic expression such as we almost instinctively feel to-day. Palestrina does not seek to proclaim the varying sentiment which underlies his texts. That leads to individual interpretation and is foreign to the habits of churchmen in the old conception, when the individual was completely resolved in the organization. He aimed to exalt the mystery of the service, not to bring it down to popular comprehension and make it a personal utterance. For such a design in music we must wait until after the Reformation, when the ancient mysticism began to fall back before the demands of reason, when the idea of the sole and sufficient mediation of the Church lost some of its power in the face of the growing conviction of intimate personal relationship between man and his creator. Now idealism had to yield some of its dominion to realism, and a more rugged art grew up in place of that which had been so wonderfully sublimated by mysticism.
The source of beauty in Palestrina's music.
It is in Bach, who came a century after Palestrina, that we find the most eloquent musical proclamation of the new regime, and it is in no sense disrespectful to the great German master if we feel that the change in ideals was accompanied with a loss in sensuous charm, or pure aesthetic beauty. Effect has had to yield to idea. It is in the flow of the voices, the color effects which result from combination and registers, the clarity of the harmonies, the reposefulness coming from conscious ease of utterance, the loveliness of each individual part, and the spiritual exaltation of the whole that the aesthetic mystery of Palestrina's music lies.
Bach.
Like Palestrina, Bach is the culmination of the musical practice of his time, but, unlike Palestrina, he is also the starting-point of a new development. With Bach the old contrapuntal art, now not vocal merely but instrumental also and mixed, reaches its climax, and the tendency sets in which leads to the highly complex and dramatic art of to-day. Palestrina's art is Roman; the spirit of restfulness, of celestial calm, of supernatural revelation and supernal beauty broods over it. Bach's is Gothic--rugged, massive, upward striving, human. In Palestrina's music the voice that speaks is the voice of angels; in Bach's it is the voice of men.
Bach a German Protestant.
Church and individual.
Ingenuousness of feeling.
Bach is the publisher of the truest, tenderest, deepest, and most individual religious feeling. His music is peculiarly a hymning of the religious sentiment of Protestant Germany, where salvation is to be wrought out with fear and trembling by each individual through faith and works rather than the agency of even a divinely constituted Church. It reflects, with rare fidelity and clearness, the essential qualities of the German people--their warm sympathy, profound compassion, fervent love, and sturdy faith. As the Church fell into the background and the individual came to the fore, religious music took on the dramatic character which we find in the "Passion Music" of Bach. Here the sufferings and death of the Saviour, none the less an ineffable mystery, are depicted as the most poignant experience of each individual believer, and with an ingenuousness that must forever provoke the wonder of those who are unable to enter into the German nature. The worshippers do not hesitate to say: "My Jesus, good-night!" as they gather in fancy around His tomb and invoke sweet rest for His weary limbs. The difference between such a proclamation and the calm voice of the Church should be borne in mind when comparing the music of Palestrina with that of Bach; also the vast strides made by music during the intervening century.
The motet.
Of Bach's music we have in the repertories of our best choral societies a number of motets, church cantatas, a setting of the "Magnificat," and the great mass in B minor. The term Motet lacks somewhat of definiteness of the usage of composers. Originally it seems likely that it was a secular composition which the Netherland composers enlisted in the service of the Church by adapting it to Biblical and other religious texts. Then it was always unaccompanied. In the later Protestant motets the chorale came to play a great part; the various stanzas of a hymn were given different settings, the foundation of each being the hymn tune. These were interspersed with independent pieces, based on Biblical words.
Church cantatas.
The Church Cantatas (Kirchencantaten) are larger services with orchestral accompaniment, which were written to conform to the various religious festivals and Sundays of the year; each has for a fundamental subject the theme which is proper to the day. Again, a chorale provides the musical foundation. Words and melody are retained, but between the stanzas occur recitatives and metrical airs, or ariosos, for solo voices in the nature of commentaries or reflections on the sentiment of the hymn or the gospel lesson for the day.
The "Passions."
Origin of the "Passions."
Early Holy Week services.
The "Passions" are still more extended, and were written for use in the Reformed Church in Holy Week. As an art-form they are unique, combining a number of elements and having all the apparatus of an oratorio plus the congregation, which took part in the performance by singing the hymns dispersed through the work. The service (for as a service, rather than as an oratorio, it must be treated) roots in the Miracle plays and Mysteries of the Middle Ages, but its origin is even more remote, going back to the custom followed by the primitive Christians of making the reading of the story of the Passion a special service for Holy Week. In the Eastern Church it was introduced in a simple dramatic form as early as the fourth century A.D., the treatment being somewhat like the ancient tragedies, the text being intoned or chanted. In the Western Church, until the sixteenth century, the Passion was read in a way which gave the service one element which is found in Bach's works in an amplified form. Three deacons were employed, one to read (or rather chant to Gregorian melodies) the words of Christ, another to deliver the narrative in the words of the Evangelist, and a third to give the utterances and exclamations of the Apostles and people. This was the Cantus Passionis Domini nostri Jesu Christe of the Church, and had so strong a hold upon the tastes of the people that it was preserved by Luther in the Reformed Church.
The service amplified.
Bach's settings.
Under this influence it was speedily amplified. The successive steps of the progress are not clear, but the choir seems to have first succeeded to the part formerly sung by the third deacon, and in some churches the whole Passion was sung antiphonally by two choirs. In the seventeenth century the introduction of recitatives and arias, distributed among singers who represented the personages of sacred history, increased the dramatic element of the service which reached its climax in the "St. Matthew" setting by Bach. The chorales are supposed to have been introduced about 1704. Bach's "Passions" are the last that figure in musical history. That "according to St. John" is performed occasionally in Germany, but it yields the palm of excellence to that "according to St. Matthew," which had its first performance on Good Friday, 1729, in Leipsic. It is in two parts, which were formerly separated by the sermon, and employs two choirs, each with its own orchestra, solo singers in all the classes of voices, and a harpsichord to accompany all the recitatives, except those of Jesus, which are distinguished by being accompanied by the orchestral strings.
Oratorios.
Sacred operas.
In the nature of things passions, oratorios, and their secular cousins, cantatas, imply scenes and actions, and therefore have a remote kinship with the lyric drama. The literary analogy which they suggest is the epic poem as contra-distinguished from the drama. While the drama presents incident, the oratorio relates, expounds, and celebrates, presenting it to the fancy through the ear instead of representing it to the eye. A great deal of looseness has crept into this department of music as into every other, and the various forms have been approaching each other until in some cases it is become difficult to say which term, opera or oratorio, ought to be applied. Rubinstein's "sacred operas" are oratorios profusely interspersed with stage directions, many of which are impossible of scenic realization. Their whole purpose is to work upon the imagination of the listeners and thus open gate-ways for the music. Ever since its composition, Saint-Saens's "Samson and Delilah" has held a place in both theatre and concert-room. Liszt's "St. Elizabeth" has been found more effective when provided with pictorial accessories than without. The greater part of "Elijah" might be presented in dramatic form.
Influence of the Church plays.
Origin of the oratorio.
The choral element extended.
Narrative and descriptive choruses.
Dramatization.
Confusing and anomalous as these things are, they find their explanation in the circumstance that the oratorio never quite freed itself from the influence of the people's Church plays in which it had its beginning. As a distinct art-form it began in a mixture of artistic entertainment and religious worship provided in the early part of the sixteenth century by Filippo Neri (now a saint) for those who came for pious instruction to his oratory (whence the name). The purpose of these entertainments being religious, the subjects were Biblical, and though the musical progress from the beginning was along the line of the lyric drama, contemporaneous in origin with it, the music naturally developed into broader forms on the choral side, because music had to make up for the lack of pantomime, costumes, and scenery. Hence we have not only the preponderance of choruses in the oratorio over recitative, arias, duets, trios, and so forth, but also the adherence in the choral part to the old manner of writing which made the expansion of the choruses possible. Where the choruses left the field of pure reflection and became narrative, as in "Israel in Egypt," or assumed a dramatic character, as in the "Elijah," the composer found in them vehicles for descriptive and characteristic music, and so local color came into use. Characterization of the solo parts followed as a matter of course, an early illustration being found in the manner in which Bach lifted the words of Christ into prominence by surrounding them with the radiant halo which streams from the violin accompaniment. In consequence the singer to whom was assigned the task of singing the part of Jesus presented himself to the fancy of the listeners as a representative of the historical personage--as the Christ of the drama.
The chorus in opera and oratorio.
The growth of the instrumental art here came admirably into play, and so it came to pass that opera and oratorio now have their musical elements of expression in common, and differ only in their application of them--opera foregoing the choral element to a great extent as being a hindrance to action, and oratorio elevating it to make good the absence of scenery and action. While oratorios are biblical and legendary, cantatas deal with secular subjects and, in the form of dramatic ballads, find a delightful field in the world of romance and supernaturalism.
The Mass.
Secularization of the Mass.
Transferred from the Church to the concert-room, and considered as an art-form instead of the eucharistic office, the Mass has always made a strong appeal to composers, and half a dozen masterpieces of missal composition hold places in the concert lists of the singing societies. Notable among these are the Requiems of Mozart, Berlioz, and Verdi, and the Solemn Mass in D by Beethoven. These works represent at one and the same time the climax of accomplishment in the musical treatment and the secularization of the missal text. They are the natural outcome of the expansion of the office by the introduction of the orchestra into the Church, the departure from the a capella style of writing, which could not be consorted with the orchestra, and the growth of a desire to enhance the pomp of great occasions in the Church by the production of masses specially composed for them. Under such circumstances the devotional purpose of the mass was lost in the artistic, and composers gave free reign to their powers, for which they found an ample stimulus in the missal text.
Sentimental masses.
Mozart and the Mass.
The masses for the dead.
Gossec's Requiem.
The first effect, and the one which largely justifies the adherents of the old ecclesiastical style in their crusade against the Catholic Church music of to-day, was to make the masses sentimental and operatic. So little regard was had for the sentiment of the words, so little respect for the solemnity of the sacrament, that more than a century ago Mozart (whose masses are far from being models of religious expression) could say to Cantor Doles of a Gloria which the latter showed him, "S'ist ja alles nix," and immediately sing the music to "Hol's der Geier, das geht flink!" which words, he said, went better. The liberty begotten by this license, though it tended to ruin the mass, considered strictly as a liturgical service, developed it musically. The masses for the dead were among the earliest to feel the spirit of the time, for in the sequence, Dies irae, they contained the dramatic element which the solemn mass lacked. The Kyrie, Credo, Gloria, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei are purely lyrical, and though the evolutionary movement ended in Beethoven conceiving certain portions (notably the Agnus Dei) in a dramatic sense, it was but natural that so far as tradition fixed the disposition and formal style of the various parts, it should not be disturbed. At an early date the composers began to put forth their powers of description in the Dies irae, however, and there is extant in a French mass an amusing example of the length to which tone-painting in this music was carried by them. Gossec wrote a Requiem on the death of Mirabeau which became famous. The words, Quantus tremor est futurus, he set so that on each syllable there were repetitions, staccato, of a single tone, thus:
This absurd stuttering Gossec designed to picture the terror inspired by the coming of the Judge at the last trumpet.
The orchestra in the Mass.
Beethoven and Berlioz.
The development of instrumentation placed a factor in the hands of these writers which they were not slow to utilize, especially in writing music for the Dies irae, and how effectively Mozart used the orchestra in his Requiem it is not necessary to state. It is a safe assumption that Beethoven's Mass in D was largely instrumental in inspiring Berlioz to set the Requiem as he did. With Beethoven the dramatic idea is the controlling one, and so it is with Berlioz. Beethoven, while showing a reverence for the formulas of the Church, and respecting the tradition which gave the Kyrie a triple division and made fugue movements out of the phrases "Cum sancto spiritu in gloria Dei patris--Amen," "Et vitam venturi," and "Osanna in excelsis," nevertheless gave his composition a scope which placed it beyond the apparatus of the Church, and filled it with a spirit that spurns the limitations of any creed of less breadth and universality than the grand Theism which affectionate communion with nature had taught him.
Berlioz's Requiem.
Dramatic effects in Haydn's masses.
Berlioz's orchestra.
Berlioz, less religious, less reverential, but equally fired by the solemnity and majesty of the matter given into his hands, wrote a work in which he placed his highest conception of the awfulness of the Last Judgment and the emotions which are awakened by its contemplation. In respect of the instrumentation he showed a far greater audacity than Beethoven displayed even in the much-mooted trumpets and drums of the Agnus Dei, where he introduces the sounds of war to heighten the intensity of the prayer for peace, "Dona nobis pacem." This is talked about in the books as a bold innovation. It seems to have escaped notice that the idea had occurred to Haydn twenty-four years before and been realized by him. In 1796 Haydn wrote a mass, "In Tempore Belli," the French army being at the time in Steyermark. He set the words, "Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi," to an accompaniment of drums, "as if the enemy were already heard coming in the distance." He went farther than this in a Mass in D minor, when he accompanied the Benedictus with fanfares of trumpets. But all such timid ventures in the use of instruments in the mass sink into utter insignificance when compared with Berlioz's apparatus in the Tuba mirum of his Requiem, which supplements the ordinary symphonic orchestra, some of its instruments already doubled, with four brass bands of eight or ten instruments each, sixteen extra drums, and a tam-tam.
FOOTNOTES:
"Notes on the Cultivation of Choral Music," by H.E. Krehbiel, p. 17.
