42 chapters
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42 chapters
Editor of "Music" Magazine,
Editor of "Music" Magazine,
Author of "How to Understand Music," "Studies in Phrasing," "Twenty Lessons to a Beginner," "Primer of Musical Forms," Associate Editor of Mason's "Pianoforte Technics," etc., etc. CHICAGO: THE "MUSIC" MAGAZINE PUBLISHING CO. 1402-5 THE AUDITORIUM. Copyright by W. S. B. Mathews , 1891....
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PREFACE.
PREFACE.
I HAVE here endeavored to provide a readable account of the entire history of the art of music, within the compass of a single small volume, and to treat the luxuriant and many-sided later development with the particularity proportionate to its importance, and the greater interest appertaining to it from its proximity to the times of the reader. The range of the work can be most easily estimated from the Table of Contents ( pages 5-10 ). It will be seen that I have attempted to cover the same ex
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INTRODUCTION.
INTRODUCTION.
T HE name "music" contains two ideas, both of them important in our modern use of the term: The general meaning is that of "a pleasing modulation of sounds." In this sense the term is used constantly by poets, novelists and even in conversation—as when we speak of the "music of the forest," the "music of the brook" or the "music of nature." There is also a reminiscence of the etymological derivation of the term, as something derived from the "Muses," the fabled retinue of the Greek god Apollo, w
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CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER I.
B Y a curious fortune we are able to form an approximately accurate idea of the musical instruments in use in Egypt as long ago as about 4000 B.C. The earliest advanced civilization of which any coherent traces have come down to us was developed along the Nile, where the equable climate and the periodic inundations of the river raised the pursuit of the husbandman above the uncertainties incident to less favorable climates, while at the same time the mild climate reduced to a minimum the demands
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CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER II.
S ECOND in point of antiquity, but first in modern association, comes the music of the Hebrews, and of the other allied nations of Assyria and Babylon, from whom they learned a part of their art of music. The place of music in the cult of the Hebrews was very large and important, yet in spite of this fact they never elevated their music into an art, strictly so called. There are no evidences of a progressive development of instruments and a tonal sense among this people. As they were when first
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CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER III.
U PON several accounts the development of the art of music among the ancient Greeks is both important and interesting. Our word "music" is theirs; it carries within its etymology the derivation from the Muses, the nine agreeable divinities who presided over the more becoming and nobler activities of the Greek mind. By music the Greeks meant much more than merely the tonal art itself. Under this term they included pretty much all that they had of a liberal education; grammar, history, rhetoric, m
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CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER IV.
V ERY important developments of the art of music took place in India from a remote period, but dates are entirely uncertain. When the hymns of the Rig-Veda were collected into their present form, which appears to have been about 1500 B.C., music was highly esteemed. It was in India that the art of inciting vibrations of a string by means of a bow was discovered; and our violin had its origin there, but the date is entirely unknown. The primitive violin was the ravanastron, which the Ceylonese cl
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CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER V.
A CCORDING to the division of the subject in the beginning of this work, the period from the Christian era to that of Palestrina, A.D. 1600, is one of apprentice work, in which the details of art were being mastered, but in which no music, according to our acceptation of the term, was produced. The history of this period is somewhat obscure, the writers who throw light on it averaging scarcely more than one to a century, scattered about in different parts of Europe. Nevertheless, the most import
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CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VI.
U PON many accounts the development of minstrelsy by the Celtic singers and harpers was one of the most important of all the forces operative in the transformation of the art from the monody of the ancients to the expressive melody and rich harmony of modern music. As it is to a considerable extent one side of the direct course of this history, which hitherto has dealt largely with the south of Europe, the present is the most convenient time for giving it the consideration its importance deserve
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CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VII.
U PON many accounts the influence of the Arab civilization was important in this quarter of the musical world, and it may here well enough engage our attention, since its most important aspects are those in which it operates upon the European mind, awakening there ideas which but for this stimulus might have remained dormant centuries longer. From the standpoint of the western world and the limited information concerning the followers of Mahomet which enters into our educational curricula, the A
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CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER VIII.
O NE of the earliest developments of popular music on the continent was that of the Chansons de Geste ("Songs of Action"), which were, in effect, great national epics. The period of this activity was from about 800 to 1100 or 1200, and the greatest productions were the "Songs of Roland," the "Song of Antioch," etc., translations of which may be found in collections of mediæval romances. The social conditions out of which these songs grew have been well summarized by M. Léon Gautier, in his " Les
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CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER IX.
T O the full account of the origin of the Chansons de Geste in the foregoing chapter , it remains now to add a few notes concerning the personnel of the different classes of minstrels through whose efforts these great songs were created. The first of these singers were the troubadours, who were traveling minstrels especially gifted in versification and in music. Their compositions appear to have been short, on the whole, and of various kinds, as will presently be seen. The earliest of the trouba
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CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER X.
I T is not easy to define the influence of the Christian Church in this transformation, for the reason that upon the technical side it was slight, although upon the æsthetic side it was of very great importance. From the circumstance that all the early theoretical writers from the sixth century to the thirteenth were monks or ecclesiastics of some degree, and from the very important part played by the large cathedrals in the development of polyphonic music, many historians have concluded that to
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CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XI.
T HERE is very little in the Roman writers upon music that is of interest. Macrobus, an expert grammarian and encyclopedist living at Rome at the end of the fourth or beginning of the fifth century, wrote a commentary upon the song of Scipio, in which he quotes from Pythagoras concerning the music of the spheres: "What hear I? What is it which fills my ears with sounds so sweet and powerful? It is the harmony which, formed of unequal intervals, but according to just proportion, results from the
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CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XII.
W E here enter upon one of the most interesting and important chapters in the history of music. The art of polyphony had its origin at the same period as the pointed arch and the great cathedrals of Europe, which our architects strive in vain to surpass. In the province of music it represents the same bounding movement of mind, filled with high ideality, which gave rise to the crusades, and poured out in their support such endless treasures of life and love. And in the same country, too, arose t
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CHAPTER XIII.
CHAPTER XIII.
T HE wealth and commercial activity of the Low Countries, known as Flanders, Brabant and Hainault, had now become greater than that of any other part of Europe, Italy perhaps excepted. The organization of the Communes, which began, indeed, in France as early as the tenth century, naturally reached a greater extent during the crusades, when so many of the higher and more energetic nobility were absent in the Holy Land, since the defense and order of the people at home had to be maintained by thos
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CHAPTER XIV.
CHAPTER XIV.
I TALY in the fifteenth century was in a highly prosperous condition. The great commercial cities had a profitable commerce with all parts of the then known world, and great public works had been under way for more than two centuries. The beginning of the Renaissance was marked by the great cathedrals, of which St. Mark's at Venice was a little earlier than Pisa, Siena, Florence and Milan. All these were built before 1300. Vast public works were undertaken in all parts of the country, such as th
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CHAPTER XV.
CHAPTER XV.
T HE entire movement of musical thought since three or four tones began to be put together into scales, melodies and unities of various kinds, has been in the direction of classification. This is shown very conclusively in the history of musical notation, which, at the end of the period just now under consideration, had reached a form nearly the same as we now have it. The early notation regarded tones as individual, and wholly without classification of any kind. The first musical notation of wh
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CHAPTER XVI.
CHAPTER XVI.
D URING the entire period covered by the division of the story with which we have been now for some time dealing, the influences operating upon the tonal sense in the direction of harmonic perception had also been highly stimulative to the sense of melody. All the devices of counterpoint, with their two, three and four tones of the moving voice against one of the cantus fermus , were so many incitations in the direction of melodic cleverness. This influence was still further strengthened by the
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CHAPTER XVII.
CHAPTER XVII.
I N justification of the name "apprentice period" for that part of the history of music ending with Palestrina as the representative of the finished art of the Netherlands (helped out, we may well enough admit, with no small measure of the original insight and genius of his own), a general view of the condition of music in all European countries at the beginning of the seventeenth century may well be taken. The fullness with which the details have already been treated renders it unnecessary to r
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CHAPTER XVIII.
CHAPTER XVIII.
D URING the last decade of the sixteenth century a company of Florentine gentlemen were in the habit of meeting at the house of Count Bardi for the study of ancient literature. Their attention had concentrated itself upon the drama of the Greeks, and the one thing which they sought to discover was the music of ancient tragedy, the stately and measured intonation to which the great periods of Æschylus, Euripides and Sophocles had been uttered. The alleged fragments of Pindar's music since discove
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CHAPTER XIX.
CHAPTER XIX.
F ROM Florence the art of dramatic song spread to all other parts of the world, yet not so rapidly as would have been supposed. For it was not until nearly half of the century had already elapsed that opera made a beginning in France, the country where ruled the unfortunate princess for whose nuptials the first opera had been written. French opera grew out of the ballet. This term, which at present is restricted to entertainments in which dancing is the principal feature, and the story is entire
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CHAPTER XX.
CHAPTER XX.
A S already noticed in the previous chapter , the oratorio had its origin at the same time as opera, both being phases of the stilo rappresentativo , or the effort to afford musical utterance to dramatic poetry—at first merely a solemn and impressive utterance, later, as the possibilities of the new phase of art unfolded themselves, a descriptive utterance, in which the music colored and emphasized the moods of the text and the situation. The idea of oratorio was not new. All through the Middle
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CHAPTER XXI.
CHAPTER XXI.
T HE beginning of instrumental music, apart from vocal, is to be found in the latter part of the sixteenth century, but the main advances toward freedom of style and spontaneous expression were made during the seventeenth, and, as we might expect, originally in Italy, where the art of music was more prosperous, and incitations to advance were more numerous and diversified. Upon all accounts the honor of the first place in the account of this part of the development of modern music is to be given
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CHAPTER XXII.
CHAPTER XXII.
I T is not easy to characterize simply and clearly the nature of the musical development which took place during the eighteenth century. The blossoming of music was so manifold, so diversified, so irrepressible in every direction, that there was not one single province of it, wherein new and masterly creations were not brought out. The central figures of this period were those of the two Colossi, Bach and Händel; after them Haydn, the master of genial proportion and taste; Mozart, the melodist o
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CHAPTER XXIII.
CHAPTER XXIII.
A LL things considered, the most remarkable figure of this period was that of the great John Sebastian Bach, who was born at Eisenach, in Prussia, in 1685, and died at Leipsic in 1750. It is scarcely too much to say that this great man has exercised more influence upon the development of music than any other composer who has ever lived. In his own day he led a quiet, uneventful life, at first as student, then as court musician at Weimar, where he played the violin; later as organist at Arnstadt,
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CHAPTER XXIV.
CHAPTER XXIV.
T HE companion figure to Bach, in this epoch, was that of George Frederick Händel, who was born at the little town of Halle in the same year as Bach, 1685, and died in London in 1759. Händel's father was a physician, and although the boy showed considerable aptitude for music his father did not think favorably of his pursuing it as a vocation; but the fates were too strong for him. When George Frederick was about eight years old, he managed to go with his father to the court of the duke of Saxe
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CHAPTER XXV.
CHAPTER XXV.
N ONE of the sons of Bach inherited the commanding genius of their father, although four of them showed talent above the average of musicians of their day, and one of them distinguished himself and exercised an important influence upon the subsequent course of pianoforte music. The most gifted of Bach's sons was Wilhelm Friedmann, the eldest (1710-1784), who was especially educated by his father for a musician. He turned out badly, however, his enormous talents not being able to save him from th
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CHAPTER XXVI.
CHAPTER XXVI.
O NE of the most engaging personalities, and at the same time one of the most highly gifted, versatile and richly endowed geniuses who ever adorned the art of music, was that of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791). He was a son of the violin player and musician, Leopold Mozart, living at Salzburg. At an extremely early age he showed his love for music by listening to the lessons of his sister. By the time he was four, his father commenced to give him lessons, and when he was less than five years
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CHAPTER XXVII.
CHAPTER XXVII.
T HE labors of Haydn and Mozart in the rich field of instrumental music were followed immediately by those of Ludwig van Beethoven, who was born at the little town of Bonn, on the Rhine, about twenty miles above Cologne, in 1770. He died at Vienna, 1827. The years between these dates were filled with labor and inspiration, beyond those of any other master. Beethoven's place in music is at the head. Whether he or Bach ought to be reckoned the very greatest of all the great geniuses who have appea
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CHAPTER XXVIII.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
T HE three masters, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, in relation to the symphony stand upon a plane of substantial equality, whether we estimate their merits according to the absolute worth of the compositions they produced in this form, or in the value of the additions which each in turn made to the ideal of his predecessor. Naturally, as the latest of the three, though so far contemporaneous with them as to form part of a single moment in the progress of art, the symphonies of Beethoven are greate
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CHAPTER XXIX.
CHAPTER XXIX.
U PON the musical side, and in one instance upon the dramatic side as well, there were three great forces in opera during this century. The first of these in order of time was Karl Heinrich Graun (1701-1759). A native of Dresden, he was educated there, and having early a beautiful voice became treble singer to the town council—a curious name for a position in the leading church. He profited by the instruction of the official directors of the choir and the church, Petzold and Schmidt, and very ea
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CHAPTER XXX.
CHAPTER XXX.
I T was during the eighteenth century that the pianoforte definitely established itself in the estimation of musicians, artists and the common people, as the handiest and most useful of domestic and solo instruments. The progress was very slow at first, the musicians such as Bach, Händel, Scarlatti and Rameau, the four great virtuosi of the beginning of this century, generally preferred the older forms of the instrument, the clavier or the harpsichord, both on account of their more agreeable tou
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CHAPTER XXXI.
CHAPTER XXXI.
I N ordinary speech a distinction is made between the musical productions of the eighteenth century and those of the next following; the former being called Classic , the latter Romantic . The terms are used rather indefinitely. According to Hegel, whose teaching coincided with the last years of Beethoven's life, the classic in art embraces those productions in which the general is aimed at, rather than the particular ; the reposeful and completely satisfactory , rather than the forced , or the
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CHAPTER XXXII.
CHAPTER XXXII.
T HE first two great figures of the nineteenth century were those of Carl Maria von Weber, whose work will be considered later, and the great song writer, Franz Peter Schubert (1797-1828). This remarkable man was born of poor parents in Vienna, or near it, his father being a schoolmaster, earning the proverbially meager stipend of the profession in Germany at that time, amounting to no more than $100 or $200 a year. The family was musical, and the Sundays were devoted to quartette playing and ot
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CHAPTER XXXIII.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
T HE popular instrument of the nineteenth century has been the pianoforte, the result of an evolution having its beginning more than six centuries back. It is impossible in the present state of knowledge to trace all the steps through which this remarkable instrument has reached its present form. In the Assyrian sculptures discovered by Layard, there are instruments apparently composed of metal rods or plates, touched by hammers, upon the same general principle as the toy instrument with glass p
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CHAPTER XXXIV.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
G ERMAN opera reached an extraordinary development during the nineteenth century, the distinguishing characteristics being an extremely full and dramatically conceived treatment of the orchestra, and a mode of delivering the text partaking of the character of melody and recitative in about equal proportions, the entire object being to present the action to the inner consciousness of the beholder in the most impressive manner possible. In Italian opera, as we have seen, there was a large developm
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CHAPTER XXXV.
CHAPTER XXXV.
S TRICTLY speaking, there was no break in the continuity of art development represented in the virtuoso appearances recorded in Chapter XXX , and those with which we have presently to deal. In point of chronology, many of those recorded in the present chapter were contemporaneous with some of those in the former. Nevertheless, the artists with whom we are now concerned represent principles more decidedly belonging to the romantic, and hence to the nineteenth century, than did those whose operati
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CHAPTER XXXVI.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
O NE of the most fortunate personalities among modern composers was Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809-1847), who was born in Berlin, the grandson of Moses Mendelssohn, the famous Jewish philosopher. The father of Felix was a banker, and his mother a woman of a very sweet and amiable disposition. The children of Abraham Mendelssohn were baptized in the Christian faith in order to escape in some degree the prejudice against the Jewish race. Felix, having a strong inclination to music, at an early
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CHAPTER XXXVII.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
T HE strongest personality of the Italian composers (though by no means the loveliest), at the beginning of the nineteenth century, was that of Gasparo Spontini (1774-1851). He was born of peasant stock in the Roman states and educated at Naples, where his boyish successes were made. In 1803 he went to Paris, where he composed several operas with very poor success. Nevertheless, having full confidence in his own powers, he was not discouraged, and in 1804 his one-act opera of "Milton" was perfor
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CHAPTER XXXVIII.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
I N the earlier part of the nineteenth century the operatic stage of Paris shared with those of Berlin and Dresden the honor of producing brilliant novelties by the best composers. In France there had been a persistent cultivation of this province of musical creation, and many talented composers have appeared upon the scene of the Grand Opera and that of the Opéra Comique . French opera has developed into a genre of its own, rhythmically well regulated, instrumented in a pleasing and attractive
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CHAPTER XXXIX.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
B EFORE summing up the remaining names of musical history, a brief retrospect over the present century may be in place. The first quarter of the nineteenth century was distinguished by two composers of the first order—Beethoven and Schubert; and by a large number of highly gifted lesser artists, some of whom, such as Spohr and Weber, bid fair to remain long enrolled in the list of immortals. The second quarter of the century was made memorable by the rise and blossoming into full glory of the ro
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