Transcriber's Note: To enhance the audio listener's enjoyment, midi files have been added to music illustrations. The spelling has been harmonized. Obvious printer errors have been repaired. "Arianna" was first performed in 1608.

How Music Developed
A Critical and Explanatory Account of the
Growth of Modern Music

BY
W. J. HENDERSON
Author of
"The Story Of Music,"
"Preludes and Studies,"
and
"What is Good Music?"

NEW YORK
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1898
By Frederick A. Stokes Co.
Printed in the United States of America.

TO
CHARLES BAMBURGH

[Table of Contents]

[How Music Developed]
[Chapter I]

The Beginning of Modern Music

Descent of the Roman Chant from the kithara songs of the Romans and thence from those of the Greeks—First appearance of modern melody—Steps toward the formation of a musical system—Ambrosian and Gregorian chants—Their character—Nokter Balbulus and sequences—Spread of the Roman chant—Nature of music at this period.

IN reading any history of the development of music as an art one must ever bear in mind the fact that music was also developing at the same time as a popular mode of expression, and that the two processes were separate. The cultivation of modern music as an art was begun by the medieval priests of the Roman Catholic Church, who were endeavoring to arrange a liturgy for their service, and it is due to this fact that for several centuries the only artistic music was that of the Church, and that it was controlled by influences which barely touched the popular songs of the times. In the course of years the two kinds of music came together, and important changes were made. But any account of the development of modern music as an art is compelled to begin with the story of the medieval chant.

In the beginning the chants of the Christian Church, from which the medieval chant was developed, were without system. They were a heterogeneous mass of music derived wholly from sources which chanced to be near at hand. The early Christians in Judea must naturally have borrowed their music from the worship of their forefathers, who were mostly Jews. The Christians in Greece naturally adapted Greek music to their requirements, while those in Rome made use of the Roman kithara (lyre) songs, which in their turn were borrowed from the Greeks. Christ and the apostles at the Last Supper chanted one of the old Hebrew psalms. Saint Paul speaks also of "hymns and spiritual songs," by one of which designations he certainly means the hymns of the early Christians founded on Roman lyre songs. It is also on record that the Christian communities of Alexandria as early as 180 A. D. were in the habit of repeating the chant of the Last Supper with an accompaniment of flutes, and Pliny, the Younger (62-110 A. D.), describes the custom of singing hymns to the glory of Christ.

The psalms in the early Church were chanted antiphonally; that is, one verse was sung by one part of the congregation and answered by another with the next verse, or they were chanted by priest and congregation alternately. Of course there could not have been any high artistic endeavor in such music, because it must have been within the capacity of the least skilled performers. There could not have been any fixed system in the Church until its various branches in the vast Roman empire were unified under a Christian emperor, Constantine (306-337 A. D.). Under him art and architecture began to serve the Church, and it is about this time that we begin to discover attempts at the formation of a system in church music. Four distinct steps are traceable:—

First. A. D. 314.—Pope Sylvester founded singing-schools at Rome.
Second. A. D. 350.—Flavian and Diodorus made antiphonal chanting of the psalms a required part of the church service at Antioch.
Third. A. D. 367.—The Council of Laodicea forbade congregational singing, and confined the service to a trained choir.
Fourth. A. D. 384 (about).—St. Ambrose brought together the inharmonious elements in the church liturgy and formulated a general system of chanting known as the Ambrosian chant.

The foundation of singing-schools produced choristers who were able to meet the requirements of the improved music, for that was beyond the narrow powers of the early congregations. The reader will readily see how the first three steps toward the formation of a system were logical. But differences in practice naturally crept in, and the work of Ambrose appears to have been one of regulation. He founded his system on four of the ancient Greek scales, which were, of course, at the base of all the Greek and Roman tunes then used in the Church. It is unnecessary to go into any extended account of Greek music in order to get an idea of the character of the Ambrosian chant, but it is needful to give the subject some consideration, because Greek music influenced modern music for several centuries. All modern major scales are formed thus: two whole intervals followed by one-half interval (a semitone), then three whole intervals followed by a half. For example, take the scales of C and G:—

[Listen: C Scale]

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[C scale: 1 2 ½ 1 2 3 ½]

[Listen: G Scale]

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[G scale: 1 2 ½ 1 2 3 ½]

The Greek scales were formed on a wholly different principle. The foundation of the system was the tetrachord, which always contained, as its name implies, four notes. Between some two of these there was always a half-interval, and the scale was named according to the position of that semitone. The Doric scale had the semitone at the beginning of each tetrachord, the Phrygian in the middle, and the Lydian at the top, thus:—

[Listen: Doric] [Listen: Phrygian] [Listen: Lydian]

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Doric. [½ 1 2 3 ½ 1 2 3]
Phrygian. [1 ½ 1 2 3 ½ 1 2]
Lydian. [1 2 ½ 1 2 3 ½ 1]

The reader will understand that every scale was divided into two tetrachords, each having its semitone in the same position. There were, of course, several other scales, but these are sufficient to illustrate the subject. The peculiarity of the sound of chants founded on these ancient scales to our modern ears is what we call the "lack of tonality." Our scales are all determined by the semitone between the seventh and eighth notes, called the leading note. The scale of G, for instance, cannot exist without the F sharp. Our ears have been trained to expect that progression, and so these old Greek scales do not seem to us to be in any key at all, and when we wish to describe a tune that has apparently no beginning, end, or rhythm, we say it sounds like a chant. For several centuries all modern music written by the scientific composers suffered from this lack of tonality, while much of the popular music of the people was written in the modern major and minor keys. Any musician will see that the old Lydian scale was our scale of C major. The ancient Æolian scale was almost the same as our scale of A minor. From these two our modern scales developed themselves among the people who were not busy trying to build church liturgies out of Greek music.

Not much is known about the musical character of the Ambrosian chant except that contemporary writers regarded it as very sweet and solemn. One important fact has come down to us, namely, that the Ambrosian chant was metrical. This means that it followed the prosodial quantity of the syllables in the Latin text of the liturgy. A long syllable had a long note, and a short syllable a short note. From this peculiarity the chant obtained the name of cantus firmus, or fixed chant. It was, however, speedily merged in what is called the Gregorian chant. This has generally been attributed to Pope Gregory (590-604 A. D.); but recent investigations go to prove that he did little beyond issuing rules as to its use and for its regulation. The church chant, however, was changed in character in the time of Gregory, and one of the most fruitful alterations was the abandonment of its metrical character. The tones no longer had a determined length; and this abolished from the church music of the time the last vestige of rhythm. It furthermore left the singers free to do as they pleased, and so gave rise to abuses which seemed to be injurious to music, but which really led to good results, as we shall see. In form, the Gregorian chant was divided into five parts: the "intonation," which was the introductory phrase of the first half of the verse; the "recitation" of the principal part of that half on a single note; the "mediation," which finished the first half of the verse and formed the connecting link between it and the second half; the "recitation," which began the second half; and the "termination," which ended the verse.

[Listen: Gregorian Chant]

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[Intonation=Bar 1. Recitation=Bar 2. Mediation=Bar 3, Bar 4.
Recitation=Bar 5. Termination=Bar 6, Bar 7, Bar 8.]

Gregory arranged the mass in its present form, and prescribed a special introit for each psalm, and probably one for each division of the mass. The famous old anonymous hymns, the Te Deum, Magnificat, Benedictus, etc., had taken their place in the church service in its very earliest days; and the mass had gradually been formed by selection and arrangement of these. Another form which gradually grew up in the Church was the Sequence. This had its origin in a desire to allow the congregation more opportunity to take part in the musical service. In their oldest and purest form these sequences consisted of ornamental passages intoned on a single vowel,—as the final "a" of "jubila." These sequences illustrate in a striking manner that freedom from control of text which came so conspicuously into music in Gregory's time. This freedom, while it led to abuses of the church ritual, gave music a certain amount of independence as an art, and enabled it to develop more rapidly than it could have done had it been tied fast to the text. Nokter Balbulus, a monk of the famous convent of St. Gall, Switzerland, is said to have popularized the sequences in the ninth century by writing thirty-five special ones. Some of these are still used in the Roman Church. The convent of St. Gall, to which Nokter belonged, was a famous centre of musical culture in the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries. The writing of special words for sequences was followed by others than Nokter; and in the end these reduced themselves to these five well-known texts: Dies Iræ, Stabat Mater, Victimæ Paschali, Veni Sancte Spiritus, and Lauda Sion.

The Roman chant soon spread through Europe. The successor of Gregory was acknowledged by the Western nations as the Supreme Head of the united Church, and this, of course, tended to a general use of the same ritual. In 604 Roman singers were sent to England, and in 660 monks went to teach the Gregorian chant in Brittany. Paris had become the capital of France not long before that, and the Gallic service was now remodelled on that of Rome. The Roman ritual was introduced into Germany by Saint Boniface in 744, and it was probably made known at St. Gall about the same time. Charlemagne, in the eighth century, founded schools of music on Gregory's plan at Dijon, Cambray, Lyons, Orléans, and other French cities, and also at Regensburg, Würzburg, Mainz, and other German places.

The general introduction of the Gregorian chant established the melodic basis of modern music. It will be well for the reader to bear in mind that the three elementary constituents of music are melody, harmony, and rhythm. Melody is produced by the successive sounding of single tones of different pitch. Harmony is produced by the simultaneous sounding of single notes of different pitch. When those notes are united according to rule we call the result a chord. Rhythm is the regular recurrence of long and short beats. Now, if the reader has comprehended the account given of the early Roman chant, he will perceive that it embodied only one of the elements of music, namely, melody. There was no harmony, because everything was sung in one part. It was simply a plain chant; and when the organ first came into use to accompany it, the instrument played the same succession of single notes as the voices sang. This fact must be kept clearly in mind in order to understand the next steps in the development of modern music. In the beginning there was only melody; and that was like the earth before the creation, without form and void. There was no musical rhythm in either the Ambrosian chant, which followed the prosodial quantity of the words, nor in the Gregorian, which did not follow it. The text was prose; consequently it did not have a regular recurrence of long and short syllables, as poetry does, and therefore the music, following the text, could not have rhythm. All that existed in the beginning of the modern tone art was the raising and lowering of the voice through a certain number of intervals. How harmony and rhythm made their appearance in the early stages of the art, and what forms they took, must next be related.

[Chapter II]

Harmony, Notation, and Measure

The Organum of Hucbald—Use of combinations disagreeable to modern ears—Appearance of rhythm—Work of Franco, of Cologne—Establishment of Dual and Triple Measure—Introduction of notes to represent sounds of different duration.

IN the growth of modern music the second step was the introduction of harmony. The simultaneous sounding of notes of different pitch in combinations called chords is so essential a part of the music of today that even the uneducated mind has difficulty in conceiving a tune as wholly dissociated from the coloring influences of its harmony. Every schoolboy is accustomed to hearing melodies with what he calls a "bass" (an accompaniment founded on chords), and in the commonest music-hall songs the familiar harmonies are the results of centuries of experiment among the ecclesiastical fathers of modern music. It is difficult for us to understand that there was a time when harmony was unknown to musicians, but such is the case; and the first experiments resulted in the use of combinations which sound intolerable to our ears, while some of those which we regard as the most familiar and useful were deemed unbearable by some of the early authorities. For example, no modern chord can be formed without the third, i.e., the third whole note above the key-note. In the key of C that is E; in G it is B, thus:—

[Listen: Thirds]

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[Two Note Chord]

Yet for several centuries after harmony began to be employed that particular combination was forbidden, so that it was impossible to write the common chord of C major

[Listen: C Major Chord]

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[Three Note Chord]

or of G major

[Listen: G Major Chord]

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[Three Note Chord]

or of any other modern major key. The result was that for several hundred years music developed along lines not those of chord harmony, the first rude experiments at which early gave way to what is called counterpoint. What that system was we shall see in good time, but we must now give our attention to the early attempts at harmony.

The origin of modern harmony is wrapped in obscurity. It is believed that the Greeks knew something about chords and perhaps used a few simple ones in playing accompaniments on the lyre. But they made no extended study of them, and the early fathers, who founded their system on Greek music, had nothing to learn in this matter from the Greeks. All steps in the development of modern music have been the result of long processes of growth, and it cannot be doubted that many experiments in harmony were made before the first treatise on the subject was written. The first records of harmony are found in an old work called "Enchiridion Musicæ," and they speak of a system called Organum or Diaphony, attributed to Hucbald, a Benedictine monk of St. Armand, in Flanders, near the close of the tenth century. Hucbald appears to have studied Pythagoras's musical system, in which intervals between notes were measured according to the laws of acoustics by the number of vibrations made by each note in a second. Hucbald, finding that certain intervals had a mathematical ratio, decided that they must make concords, and he founded his system of harmony on that theory. He used the intervals of the fourth, the fifth, and the octave. The fourth is the fourth note of the major scale in ascending, the fifth the fifth note, and the octave the eighth, or the recurrence of the key-note. To make this matter clearer, let me state that modern scientists have decided that the C below the staff, in the treble clef, has 256 vibrations a minute. The next C above has 512, just double. The F of this scale, which is the fourth, has 384. This is the sum of the first C increased by one-half of itself. Consequently C and F make a scientific concord and a musical one, too. But there is hardly anything more disagreeable to the modern ear than a series of consecutive fourths. Yet Hucbald thought that such a series must be scientifically correct, and that it ought, therefore, to make good music. So he wrote such harmonies as these:—

[Listen: Series of Fourths]

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[Series of Fourths: Sit glo-ri-a Do-mi-ni in sæ-cu-la.]

This is very unpleasant to modern ears, yet it is not quite so bad as a series of fifths. When Hucbald wished to write in four parts he simply repeated the two treble parts in the bass an octave lower. And when he wrote in three parts he simply "doubled" the lower note of his fourth or fifth in the octave above, which is a process also forbidden in modern part writing because it makes two parts the same in melodic progression. Hucbald also employed a form of harmony in which the lowest note always remained the same. This was what we now call a "drone bass," such as is heard in the bagpipe, and it was certainly more flexible than the other kind because it admitted of the use of other intervals than the fourth and fifth. But the idea of writing in more than one part, once having appeared in music, developed itself gradually. All the earliest harmonic combinations sound ugly to our ears because of the difference in the character of the old scales adapted from Greek music for the Church and that of our scale. If the harmonists of those early days had been using our scale, no doubt they would have discovered how to write fine chords. They did, in the course of time, hit upon some of the combinations now used, and so the foundations of modern harmony were laid. But the modern style of writing did not come into use for several centuries after Hucbald's time.

The next element of music which made its appearance was rhythm. This came about through the improvements in notation and the practice of singers. It seems that after learning to add a second part to the cantus firmus, or chant, the singers, who were acquiring considerable dexterity in their art, began to ornament the additional part. This addition of ornaments was called the art of descant, because it was descanting upon a given theme. The singers all took to it with delight because it gave them fine opportunities for the display of their voices and of their musical skill. In some parts of France and the Netherlands this practice became a sort of mania. The voice which carried the chant was called the tenor, from the Latin teneo, "I hold." The other voice added an ornamental part above the chant, and as there was no measure in music, the two parts seldom came out together at the end. As long as the voices had moved in parallel fourths or fifths it was not difficult for them to keep together, but with the descanter singing two or more notes to every one of the cantus firmus it was quite impossible for them to do so. No one knows just when this art of descant entered into music, but it is certain that it was known some time before the close of the twelfth century, for it was about then that Franco, of Cologne, made successful attempts to systematize notation, and in doing so regulated the measure of music.

The earliest form of notation of which we have any knowledge is called the Neume notation. These Neumes were much like Greek accents in some respects, and in others resembled a sort of shorthand. All that could be accomplished by them was an indication of the direction in which the voice was to move, whether up or down, and of the number of notes which it was to pass. In Hucbald's day a series of horizontal lines, like our musical staff (but containing many more lines) was used. The names of the notes were written opposite the ends of the spaces between the lines, and then each syllable of the text was written in the space belonging to the note to which it was to be sung. Short lines were drawn upward or downward, as the case might be, between each syllable of one part so that that part could be followed. Another system in use in Hucbald's time, and even later, was arranged this way, the letters representing the tones:—

[Listen: Upward and Downward Lines]

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[Lau-de dig-num ca-nat sanc-tum.]

As time passed on it became evident that there ought to be some way of indicating a fixed pitch from which the notes were to start. So a line was employed and the Neumes were written in a definite manner with relation to it. If the line was red, the chant was in the key of F, and all melodies ended on F. If the line was yellow, the key was C. In the eleventh century both lines were used at the same time, and the certainty of the meaning of the Neumes became greater. Afterward Guido, of Arezzo, a famous teacher and theorist, who died in 1050, added two more lines, and thus came into existence a four-line staff. The character of the Neumes themselves had undergone many alterations, until, in Guido's time, they began to look a little like modern notes. But still there was no rhythm in the ecclesiastical music, and no way of representing it in notation. Franco advocated the introduction of measure into church music. He did not, of course, invent it, for it already existed in the popular songs and dances of the people, and had existed in them from the earliest times.

Franco was the first theorist to record the distinction between dual and triple time. The reader who is unacquainted with musical science should learn that the rhythms of music are like those of poetry. Instead of poetic feet, music has "measures" separated by vertical lines drawn through the staff, and called "bars." Measures are often called bars. The musical measure corresponds to the poetic foot. A bar with two beats in it is like a foot of two syllables, except that in music the accent is normally always on the first beat. A bar with three beats is like a dactyl, one accented and two unaccented syllables, or beats. Dual time, or measure, corresponds to a poetic rhythm made up of two-syllable feet; triple time to one of three-syllable feet. A polka is in dual time; a waltz, in triple time. Franco first explained these points, and insisted that triple ought to be used in church music for the naïve reason that its three beats in one bar made it resemble the perfection of the Holy Trinity, three persons in one God. He made many improvements in harmony, among others recognizing the third, already described, as a concord, though not a perfect one. Another important feature of Franco's teaching was his advocacy of contrary motion of parts. The manner of writing practised by Hucbald prescribed what is called parallel motion; that is, the melody of the cantus firmus and that of the descant always rose or fell together. If the one ascended one interval the other did so, too. Contrary motion permits the parts to move in opposite directions, and this makes it possible to avoid such disagreeable arrangements as consecutive fourths or fifths, and so leads the way to a richer and more beautiful harmony. Others had already practised what Franco preached in regard to this matter, so the most significant part of his work was that which dealt with measure. In order to write the measured music it was necessary to have notes representing sounds of different duration, and these notes Franco either invented or adopted. Here are the four notes which he used:—

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[Longa. Brevis. Maxima or Duplex Longa. Semibrevis.]

These names mean "long," "short," "double long," and "half short." The short note had half the duration of the long, and the duplex longa double it, while the semibrevis was half the length of the short note. We still have notes called breve and semibreve.

We have now seen how melody, harmony, and rhythm entered the process of development of modern music. But I have already called attention to the fact that the early medieval composers had no conception of a tune founded on subservient harmony, such as is now familiar to every one. They got their ideas as to the plan of composition from the art of descant, which consisted, as I have tried to explain, in adding an ornamental part to a selected chant. It became an essential of music in those early days that this second part should be melodious in itself. When the early composers began to write in more than two parts, they still preferred the style in which every part was a melody in itself. In our modern music the parts which constitute the harmonic accompaniment of a melody are not necessarily melodious in themselves, as any one can easily see who listens to the accompaniment of a popular song. The early church composers knew nothing about that kind of writing. They did not have instrumental accompaniment at all. Even after the organ began to be used, it simply played the same notes that the voices sang. The compositions were written wholly for voices, and each voice part was a melody in itself, and all sounding together produced harmonious results. This kind of writing is still employed at times. For instance, in the finale of "Die Meistersinger" overture, five different melodies are heard at the same time. This method of composition is called "polyphonic;" and we have now reached the period at which the art of descant developed into the art of counterpoint, upon which polyphonic writing rests.

[Chapter III]

The Birth of Counterpoint

The great French school of contrapuntists—What counterpoint is, and how it began—Canons and the famous "Sumer is icumen in"—Character of the French music—The masses of Machaut and Tournay—The Gallo-Belgic school and Dufay's improvements.

THERE is one peculiarity of the early attempts at writing in several melodious parts which must now be brought to the attention of the reader, and which is very difficult to explain to a person not versed in musical laws. Instead of writing free melodies to accompany the fixed chants, the early composers took up the practice of making the tune serve as its own accompaniment by the employment of a number of ingenious devices, all included in the art of counterpoint. I shall presently endeavor to explain the nature of this style of writing; but as it began in France, we must first note the historical facts in connection with the development of musical art in that country. The reader will remember that Charlemagne established schools for the cultivation of the Roman chant in many French towns. History shows us that the connection between France and the Roman Church grew closer and closer until, under Philip the Fair, the State dominated; and in the beginning of the fourteenth century the papal court was removed by the king to Avignon. In the twelfth century the University of Paris became the centre of study in Europe. It was natural in these circumstances that the cultivation of Roman Catholic church music should have flourished in Paris, and that, about 1100 A. D., a distinct school of French composers should have developed. This school flourished until 1370, and there has descended to us a knowledge of nearly five hundred composers who belonged to it. It would be impossible and useless to attempt to tell the reader all about these composers. What I desire to do is to point out what this school accomplished in the development of music.

Counterpoint is today the art of constructing two or more melodies which can be sung or played simultaneously without breaking the rules of harmony. Originally, however, it was the art of adding parts above or below a part already selected. It originated, as we have seen, in the practice of the descanters. A part improvised by a descanter came to be called contrapunctus a mente (a counterpoint out of the head), while an additional part written by a composer was called contrapunctus a penna (a counterpoint from the pen). As musicians acquired skill in the construction of these additional parts, they began to introduce new devices, and to write with greater and greater freedom. The more free their writing was, the further it tended to depart from parallel motion. In the course of time some one hit upon the musical device called "imitation," which means the repetition in a secondary part (say the bass) of some passage already heard in the principal part (the treble) while that principal part is still going on. The result of this device is that one portion of a melody is made to serve as the second voice to another portion of it. Who first hit upon this device, no one knows; but the earliest example of it which has been preserved is found in the "Posui adjutorum" of Perotin, one of the first of the French school of writers. Here is the passage; and by giving it careful study the reader will be able to understand the fundamental principle of canon, fugue, and all the polyphonic forms:—

[Listen: "Posui adjutorum" of Perotin]

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[1st Voice, 2nd Voice, Canon Form.]

I think that even a reader who is not a musician can understand this. A is the first half of a melody, and B is the second half. While the first voice is singing the first half, the second voice sings the second half as the alto part of the first half. In order to make the first half act as alto in the second half, the composer had to push the second voice one bar ahead of the first voice, and then to add three extra notes to A in order to make a conclusion to his alto part. There are two imitations in this bit: the second half of the part sung by the first voice imitates the first half of the second voice part, and the second half of the second voice part imitates the first half of the first voice part.

By extending and developing such imitation as this, composers came to write in "double counterpoint," which means the construction of two parts in such a way that their different portions can be transferred from one to the other just as they are in the selection from Perotin. The reader will see at once that composing in this manner required a great deal of calculation, and was a constant tax on the ingenuity of the musician. In its early stages it prevented any attempt at making music expressive, and reduced composition to a mere exercise of scientific skill. But it forced the composers to a close study of the materials of their art, and they acquired a great mastery over them and constantly learned more and more about the possibilities of music. Double counterpoint, which is at the foundation of the most rigid forms of polyphonic writing, was generally known in the French school at least as early as the thirteenth century, but the example from Perotin seems to show that at least some of the composers knew it much earlier. This might account for the existence of the celebrated example of early English polyphony, a "canon" called "Sumer is icumen in." This was discovered by Sir John Hawkins, who wrote a history of music in 1776. Its manuscript was copied by a monk of Reading, John of Forneste, in 1228, and it must have been composed shortly before that time. The fact that Walter Odington, an Englishman, wrote a treatise on music in 1230, when the only famous school was that of Paris, leads me to believe that these early English composers were disciples of the French. But it is certain that the composer of "Sumer is icumen in" was a greater master of counterpoint than his teachers, because this "canon" is the finest specimen of polyphonic writing that has come down to us from those early times. Here is its beginning:—

[Listen: "Sumer Is Icumen In"]

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[ [Pg 29] | [Pg 30] | [Pg 31] | [Pg 32] ]

["Sumer is icumen in" for Six Voices.]

Chorus:

Su-mer is i-cu-men in . . .

Lhu-de sing Cuc-cu,

Grow-eth sed, and blow-eth med,

And springth the w-de nu . . .

Sing Cuc-cu . . .

I urge the reader to give careful attention to the remarkable interweaving of the first four voice parts. At the fifth bar of the melody, in the first voice, the second voice enters with the beginning of the air. When the second voice reaches the fifth bar of the air, the third voice comes in, and at the same time the first voice begins the second half of the melody. When the third voice reaches the fifth bar of the first half of the air, the fourth voice comes in, and the second voice begins the second half. And so it goes on, the entrances always being made according to the rule established at the start, and each voice singing the tune without the alteration of a single interval to make it fit into the scheme. Rigid imitation of this kind is called "canon." In this particular canon the two lowest voices have a bass in two parts, written in double counterpoint, which they sing over and over again all the way through. A constantly repeated bass is called a "basso ostinato," and this is the first example of it.

This kind of writing possessed the merit of high organization, without which there can be no work of art. One might search in vain for evidences of artistic design in the early Gregorian chant, while in such works as those of the early Frenchmen and their English disciples they confront one in every measure. The result was that these writers developed several kinds of contrapuntal writing. But it must be admitted that their work was cold and mathematical, being wholly the result of ingenious calculation. Furthermore it must be borne in mind that they had no conception whatever of music as a means of expression. In a vague way they felt its suitability to the worship of their churches, and its Gothic complexity did indeed harmonize well with ecclesiastical architecture. But it never occurred to the composers of the French school to try to make music beautiful for its own sake. They were too busy exploring the resources of their art, and their materia musica was as yet too scanty to allow them to treat their art with the command of mastership. But they served well the cause of music by discovering many of its essential rules, and by formulating in their treatises much of its fundamental theory. It is not at all surprising that in the last period of this school we meet with a large work. The last important master of the school was William of Machaut, who flourished between 1284 and 1369, and wrote the mass for the coronation of Charles V. of France.

The teachings of the French spread into Belgium, and there arose a school called the Gallo-Belgic. The first evidence of its existence is found in the mass of Tournay, sung by the choristers of the Tournay cathedral. Its composer is unknown, but it was written about 1330. It is in three parts, the tenor (voice carrying the fixed chant) in the middle, the descant (or counterpoint) above, and a bass below. It is not nearly so well developed in its polyphony as "Sumer is icumen in" or the works of the Frenchmen. Two of its voices move always in parallel fourths or fifths (as in Hucbald's "organum") and the other has a contrary motion. The most famous composer of the Gallo-Belgic school was William Dufay, born 1400, died 1474. He almost wholly abandoned the use of parallel fourths and fifths, which did so much to restrict composition, and he also adopted the open-note notation, which had made its appearance in France in the closing years of the French school. Dufay used the following notes:—

[View Larger Image Here.]

I have placed under Dufay's notes their present equivalents, with the names. Dufay is the first composer of whom it is known that he made earnest efforts toward a more plastic style of composition than that previously in vogue. This was undoubtedly due to the considerable development of the art of composition. In his search after a freer style, he abandoned the strict "canon," and used "imitation" only here and there in his works. Furthermore, he discerned the musical worth of the songs of the people, and in doing so paved the way for the exertion of a large influence by folk-song upon artistic composition. His method of using the popular songs, however, was as bad as it was remarkable. In composing a mass he would substitute in place of the fixed chant of the liturgy some popular air; and he put the words in along with it, probably because the words of the liturgy could not be sung to the tune. Hence, in three masses by Dufay, still extant, the melodies and texts of three songs of his day are found. One of these songs, "L'Omme Armée," became such a favorite that for more than a century nearly every prominent composer wrote a contrapuntal mass around it. This abuse had finally to be checked by the authorities of the Church. Dufay did another thing, of more benefit to music. He wrote some music in a very simple style, in which there were passages of pure chord harmony, such as we use in our music today. As an example of this, I quote the beginning of a fragment of one of his masses, reproduced in Naumann's "History of Music":—

[Listen: Dufay Mass]

[View Larger Image Here.]

[Dufay Mass]

Before Dufay's death the Gallo-Belgic school began to be overshadowed by that of the Netherlands, with which the art of writing unaccompanied church counterpoint reached its climax. To this school we must now turn our attention.

[Chapter IV]

The Golden Age of Church Counterpoint

The great Netherlands school—Okeghem and the mechanics of music—Riddles in tone—The advent of pure beauty—Work of Josquin des Prés—Attempts at expression by Willaert and others—Secular music—Orlando Lasso and his beautiful works.

AT the period of musical history which we have now reached, the Dutch, as I have had occasion to say in another work, "led the world in painting, in liberal arts, and in commercial enterprise. Their skill in mechanics was unequalled, and we naturally expect to see their musicians further the development of musical technic." The Dutch musicians at first revelled in the exercise of mechanical ingenuity in the construction of intricate contrapuntal music. In the first period of their great school they acquired by such exercise so great a mastery of the materials of their art that in the second period they began to make serious attempts at writing beautiful music for beauty's sake. In the third period the possibilities of writing something different from church music began to be developed, and we find the Dutch masters attempting the description in tones of external phenomena by the process called tone-painting. This period also saw secular music taken into the fold of art, and began the production of madrigals and other secular songs. In the fourth period the dry old science of counterpoint was so completely conquered that the composers of the time were able to make it the vehicle of the purest expression of religious devotion the world has yet found, and church music passed through its golden age. On account of these facts let us consider this great school, which had more influence on the development of music than any other school in the history of music, under the following heads:—

Netherlands School (1425-1625 A. D.).

First Period (1425-1512).—Perfection of contrapuntal technics. Chief masters: Okeghem, Hobrecht, Brumel.
Second Period (1455-1526).—Attempts at pure beauty. Chief master, Josquin des Prés.
Third Period (1495-1572).—Development of tone-painting and secular music. Chief masters: Gombert, Willaert, Goudimel, Di Rore, Jannequin, Arcadelt.
Fourth Period (1520-1625).—Counterpoint made subservient to expression of religious feeling. Chief masters: Orlando Lasso, Swelinck, De Monte.

The reader will note that the division of these periods is not based on chronological, but artistic grounds; and hence, in respect of years, they overlap. The most famous writer of the first period was Johannes Okeghem, born between 1415 and 1430, in East Flanders. He studied under Binchois, a contemporary of Dufay, at Antwerp, was a singer in the service of Charles VII. of France in 1444, was made by Louis XI. Treasurer of the Cathedral of St. Martin's at Tours, and died there about 1513. A considerable quantity of his music has been preserved. It is notable chiefly for its technical skill; and during his life Okeghem was the most famous teacher of his day. His most noted pupil was Antoine Brumel (1460-1520), whose personal history is lost, though many of his masses and motets are preserved. Jacob Hobrecht (1430-) achieved great celebrity. Eight of his masses are extant. As I have said in another account of the Netherlands school, "It is the prevailing influence of one or two masters in each period that marks its extent. Its character was formed by that influence, and salient features of the style of each period may be fairly distinguished. The first period was marked by the extreme development of the 'canon.'" I have already endeavored to explain the nature of canonic writing. If the reader will bear in mind that it is the most rigid form of imitation, requiring the original melody to be imitated throughout in the subsidiary parts, he will not go astray. Okeghem and his contemporaries completely explored the resources of canonic writing. They invented all kinds of canons. They originated the 'crab' canon, in which the part sung by the second voice was the first voice part written backwards. Here is an example taken from a text-book by Dr. Bridge:—

[Listen: 'Crab' Cannon]

[View Larger Image Here.]

['CRAB' CANON, OR CANON RECTE ET RETRO.
Begin at either end; play either forward or backward.]

You can sing or play this through forward and then backward, and its counterpoint remains correct. They had also the inverted canon, in which the second part consisted of the first part turned upside down. The canon by augmentation makes the melody appear in a subsidiary part in notes longer than those in which it appeared in the principal part; and the canon by diminution is formed on the opposite principle. These old musical puzzle-workers had other forms far more complicated, and they took great delight in writing "riddle" canons. In these only the subject was given, with the motto, "Ex una, plures," meaning that the musician must work out the other parts from the one; and then some hint as to the manner of working them out would be given, as, "Ad medium referas, pauses relinque priores." The working out of these riddle canons became a mania with Okeghem and his immediate successors; and the result was that they acquired an immense command over the technics of contrapuntal writing. But "the highest praise that can be awarded to their works is that they are profound in their scholarship, not without evidences of taste in the selection of the formulas to be employed, and certainly imbued with a good deal of the dignity which would inevitably result from a skilful contrapuntal treatment of the church chant." It is, however, of singular significance in the history of this period that some of the works of both Hobrecht and Brumel show a tendency toward some conception of chord harmonies. Here is an example, which looks modern:—

BEGINNING OF A MOTET BY BRUMEL.
(From Naumann's "History of Music.")

[Listen: Brumel Motet]

[View Larger Image Here.]

[O Do-mi-ne Je-su Christ . . . . . e.]

On the whole, however, the first period of the Netherlands school was characterized by a devotion to the mechanics of music. The second period was illuminated and dominated by the famous Josquin des Prés, whose music is still heard at times, and is still ravishing to the ear. Josquin was born at Condé in or about 1450, and was a pupil of Okeghem. He was a singer in the Sistine Chapel at Rome, and on the death of Sixtus IV., in 1484, went to the court of Hercules d'Est, Duke of Ferrara. He was afterward a short time in the service of Louis XII. of France, and finally of Maximilian I., Emperor of the Netherlands, who made him provost of the Cathedral of Condé. In that town he died, on August 27, 1521. A large number of his works exists. There are in print nineteen masses, fifty secular pieces, and over one hundred and fifty motets. Josquin is the first genius in the development of music who had sufficient musical material already formulated to enable him to write freely. His works are notable for their elegance of style, and for the firm mastery of the difficult counterpoint of his time. Martin Luther, noting how he moulded seemingly inflexible material to his purpose, said, "Josquin is a master of the notes; they have to do as he wills; other composers must do as the notes will." Baini, the biographer of Palestrina, in describing the immense popularity of Josquin's compositions, says that there was "only Josquin in Italy, only Josquin in France, only Josquin in Germany; in Flanders, in Bohemia, in Hungary, in Spain, only Josquin." In its technical aspect Josquin's music presents for consideration no special feature, except that he wrote always in more than two parts. His music is notable chiefly for its pure beauty, and he was the first composer to make a determined effort to secure that. He was able to do this because his predecessors had so fully developed the technics of polyphonic writing. Josquin, however, was not without grave faults. He continued the practice of using secular airs in the mass, and wrote a mass on "L'Omme Armée." He also had the bad taste twice to set to music the genealogy of Christ, a mere catalogue of names.

The third period was very rich in masters of ability. Of Gombert little is known save that he was a pupil of Josquin. Adrian Willaert, the most brilliant light of his period, was born at Bruges in 1480, and was a pupil of either Josquin or Jean Mouton. After many changes he settled in Venice, where on Dec. 12, 1527, the doge, Andrea Gritti, appointed him chapel master of St. Mark's. He carried the teachings of the Netherlands school into Italy, became the head of a great music school, was the teacher of many noted organists, and had a profound and wide influence on musical art. Claude Goudimel was born in 1510, founded a music school in Rome, and was the teacher of the great Palestrina. He subsequently went to Paris, became a Protestant, and was killed in the massacre on St. Bartholomew's eve, Aug. 24, 1572. Cyprian di Rore was born in Brabant in 1516, and succeeded Willaert as chapel master of St. Mark's in Venice. He died in 1565. Clement Jannequin was a native of Flanders. Little is known of his life, but some of his compositions are extant. Willaert's work must first claim our attention. Finding two organs in St. Mark's he introduced antiphonal writing into the music of his time. He wrote some of his grand works for two choruses of four parts each, so that each chorus could answer the other across the church. He paid much less attention to rigid canonic style than his predecessors had done, because it was not suited to the kind of music which he felt was fitting for his church. He sought for grand, broad mass effects, which he learned could be obtained only by the employment of frequent passages in chords. So he began trying to write his counterpoint in such a way that the voice parts should often come together in successions of chords. In order to do this he was compelled to adopt the kind of chord formations still in use and the fundamental chord relations of modern music,—the tonic, dominant, and subdominant. The tonic is the chord of the key in which one is writing; the subdominant is that of the fourth note of the scale of that key; and the dominant that of the fifth, thus:—

[Listen: Chord Formations]

[View Larger Image Here.]

[Tonic. Subdominant. Dominant. Tonic.]

This is the succession of chords which children strum when they try to play accompaniments on the piano. It is the simplest progression of harmony we have, and lies at the basis of all our common tunes. It is called diatonic harmony because it is formed of chords on the whole tones of the scale, in contradistinction to chromatic harmony, founded on the chords of the semitones. It is necessary to speak of chromatic harmony here, because Cyprian di Rore made a special study of it, and his "Chromatic Madrigals," published in 1544, had a great influence upon the progress of music. The old church scales were essentially diatonic, and chromatic harmonies were not practicable in music written in those scales. Di Rore's madrigals were influential in showing composers how they could write more flexibly and more beautifully by breaking the shackles of the old Gregorian scales. Still, most of the music of that time continued to be essentially diatonic, for the composers had just begun to explore the possibilities of chord modulation. These possibilities do not seem to have been exhausted even by the music of Wagner.

The development of secular music at this time was remarkable. The scientific composers began to make a practice of writing music to be used outside of the church. They wrote madrigals and other part-songs of real merit, and in them they made attempts at expression. Of course these first attempts were purely imitative. The composers tried to imitate natural sounds and movements in music. Gombert wrote a clever and humorous "Bird Cantata." Jannequin, in his "Cris de Paris," tried to paint the street life of the French capital, while his "Le Bataille" is a military picture in music. These remarkable descriptive pieces were written for four voices, unaccompanied, and in polyphonic style. After trying to tell some kind of a story in secular music they tried it in religious music. One of Willaert's motets, at any rate, tells the story of Susannah, and is plainly a forerunner of the oratorio. We have seen now how the first period of the Netherlands school brought contrapuntal technics to a high state of development, how the second period produced a genius and a desire for pure beauty, and how the third period introduced a broader, simpler, and more imposing style into church music and made definite attempts at expression. We now come to the fourth period, which was destined to bring ecclesiastical counterpoint to its perfection. This period also produced a master of splendid genius, whose works live yet and ought to live as long as there is a place in the Roman Church for pure and lofty music. This man was Roland Delattre, usually known by the Italian form of his name, Orlando Lasso, or di Lasso.

Lasso was born in Mons, between 1520 and 1530. He studied at home, at Milan, Naples, and Rome, and at an early age became chapel master of the Church of St. John Lateran. In 1557 he went to Munich as director of the ducal choir. There he passed most of the remainder of his life, dying there on June 14, 1594. He was a contemporary of the great Palestrina, whose fame his far outshone. Lasso was celebrated all over Europe, was employed and honored by monarchs, and was called the "Prince of Music." He was one of the most prolific composers that ever lived. He is said to have written 2,500 works. Many of his compositions are in print today, and his quaintly beautiful madrigal, "Matona, mia cara," is often heard in concert. Other composers of this period were Jan Peters Swelinck, pupil of Cyprian di Rore, born at Deventer, 1540, died at Amsterdam, 1621, and Philip de Monte (1521-). Their work was by no means without merit, but it was overshadowed by that of their great contemporary.

Lasso was a complete master of the counterpoint of his time, but he aimed at making it a vehicle of expression for religious feeling, and succeeded. He adapted his style to his purposes. Sometimes he wrote pure hymn-tunes in four-part chords, much like our modern hymns. If he was writing for grand and imposing effects, he could handle the most complicated polyphony with ease. He wrote works for two and three choirs, and other works for only two voices. His famous "Penitential Psalms" are for two voices, and are marvellously beautiful and pathetic. Yet some of Lasso's music is as old-fashioned and stiff as Okeghem's. Again he becomes almost modern in his employment of chromatics. But there is one notable feature of Lasso's work: it contains no parade of contrapuntal difficulties for their own sake. On the contrary, it is admirable for the skill with which it conceals its own mechanical ingenuity and presents an appearance of spontaneity and fluency. It abounds in the highest and purest expression of religious feeling, and it is always beautiful as music per se. In fine we always know, when listening to the works of Lasso, that we are in the presence of a genius.

We have now reached the period at which Italy became the home of modern music. Willaert and Di Rore in Venice, Goudimel and Lasso in Rome sowed seed which was to produce beautiful fruit. At the same time influences were at work which introduced a simpler style into music and which made it an art more popular with the masses. One of these influences was the music of those very masses. The popular songs of the day had, as we have seen, long ago forced themselves upon the attention of the artistic composers. The time was now approaching when those composers turned to the popular music for suggestions as to the future development of their art. Before entering upon an account of the birth of a new style in music, the reader must go back with me and take a rapid view of the growth of the folk-song.

[Listen: Matona Mia Cara]

FIRST STANZA OF "MATONA MIA CARA."
Orlando Lasso.

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[ [Pg 51] | [Pg 52 (top)] | [Pg 52 (bottom)] | [Pg 53] ]

[Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass.]

Stanza:

Ma-to-na mi-a ca-ra

Mi fol-le-re can-zon

Ma-to-na mi-a ca-ra

Mi-fol-le-re can-zon

Can-tar sot-to fi-nes-tra

Lant-ze bu-on com-pag-non

Don, don, don,

di-ri di-ri

don, don, don, don;

Don, don, don,

di-ri di-ri

don, don, don, don.

[Chapter V]

Progress of Popular Music

Troubadours, jongleurs, minnesingers, and meistersingers—Wagner's "Tannhäuser" and "Die Meistersinger" as historical pictures—The German volkslied—The musical guilds—The waits and the minstrels.

WE saw that as far back as Dufay's time composers began to introduce secular melodies into the mass. This was an evidence that the ecclesiastical composers had been forced to make attempts to popularize their works by a rude adoption of the melodies of the people. The question, therefore, naturally arises: Who were the composers of the secular music? Of course that is a question that cannot be answered very definitely, but we do know who were the secular musicians of the time, and we know that they were nearer the fundamental principles of modern music than the churchmen were. The enormous mass of ecclesiastical music produced in the middle ages was fit only for the worship of cathedrals. It could never have been made to utter the notes of human passion, and until some other style was found, the modern symphony, song, and opera must have remained impossible. Church counterpoint survives today only in church music and in the German fugue, a form of music which is conspicuous for its intellectual rather than its emotional qualities. The early secular musicians had no science at all, and very little art. Their music was, therefore, simple and unpretentious, but it contained the germs of our modern art forms, and it was bound in time to force its way into the studies of the fathers.

The secular musicians of the early time were wanderers on the face of Europe. They were the troubadours, jongleurs, minnesingers, meistersingers, and minstrels.

The whole race of strolling musicians in the middle ages almost certainly descended from the Roman comedians who were driven out of the seven-hilled city when Alaric swept down upon it with fire and the sword. They wandered into foreign lands to sing and pipe before the Frankish chiefs, now their lords and masters. In the earliest days they were simple vagabonds, whom the law did not allow redress for bodily injury wantonly inflicted. In the latter half of the twelfth and the early part of the thirteenth centuries these strolling musicians began to be employed in the mysteries and miracle plays, and thus gradually arose in the public estimation. Even before that time they had begun to be taken into the service of the knightly troubadours and minnesingers as accompanists, their French title being jongleurs.

Subsequently it became their business to go about singing the songs of their masters, in short, to become their publishers. The troubadours themselves were nobles, originally those of southeastern France. They got their first inspiration from the folk songs, but their own songs were distinguished by refinement and improved melody. These knightly singers existed simultaneously with the jongleurs, who sang and played for money. The most celebrated troubadours were King Thibaut, of Navarre (1201-1253), and Adam de la Halle (1240-1286). It is a notable and significant fact that the songs of the troubadours, like most of the folk songs, ignored the church modes and moved in the modern major and minor keys.

The last of the German minnesingers, Heinrich von Meissen, died in 1318, but the celebrated Confrèrie de St. Julien des Ménestriers, of Paris, lasted at any rate till 1741, for it is recorded that in that year Louis XV. made Jean Pierre Guignon "le Roy des Violons." The songs of the troubadours and wandering minstrels were the popular songs of the day of Columbus, and in Spain the troubadours still survived. The character of the music sung by these persons is well described by Fanny Raymond Ritter in her "Essay on the Troubadours." She says:—

"The merit of the troubadours in furthering the progress of music as an art was that they liberated melody from the fetters of calculation, gave it the stamp of individuality, and bore it on the wings of fancy into the domains of sentiment. They had the further merit of introducing new and peculiar changes of time, which, apparently irregular, were really forcible, symmetrical, and original. It is also more than probable that the troubadours received new ideas in regard to melody from the East; as they found among the Arabs not only a different system of tones, but many fanciful vocal ornaments then unknown in Europe, and which they introduced in their own songs on their return from the Crusades. But as harmony was in that day yet undeveloped, the flowing vine of melody received little support from it, and therefore often appears weak. The rules of composition were then highly complicated and ill classified, yet they were well understood by the best educated troubadours; and though their earlier songs were stiff, closely resembling the Gregorian chant in form and style, in some of the latter ones we find graceful melodies that leave little to be desired, and that possess more real variety and individuality of character than do the words attached to them."

It is not a far cry from France to Germany across the Rhine, and the chanson of the troubadour soon found its counterpart in the minnesong of the fatherland. The era of the minnesinger has been divided into three periods. The first, whose beginning is not definitely fixed, ended near the close of the twelfth century. The second period comprised the last decade of the twelfth century and the first half of the thirteenth. It was the golden age of the minnesong, the age of Wagner's "Tannhäuser" and the great Sängerkrieg at the Wartburg Castle, the age of the Landgrave Hermann, Wolfram von Eschenbach, and Walther von der Vogelweide. This time has been made alive for us by the genius of Wagner, whose contest in "Tannhäuser" introduces the actual personages of the real story. The third period was that of decline. The fourteenth century saw the gradual decrease of feudal power, and the burghers and artisans dared to do what had hitherto been reserved for their lordly masters. Thus the minnesong was supplanted by the meistersong, and the meistersinger became the musical lawgiver of Germany.

The songs of the meistersingers were somewhat stiff and formal, yet not lacking in melody, as that used by Wagner as the theme of his march goes to show. Perhaps no better description of a meistersong could be given here than that sung by "Kothner" in expounding the "Leges Tabulaturæ" to "Walther von Stolzing":—

Each mastersinger-created stave
Its regular measurement must have,
By sundry regulations stated
And never violated.
What we call a section is two stanzas;
For each the self-same melody answers:
A stanza several lines doth blend,
And each line with a rhyme must end.
Then come we to the "After Song,"
Which must be also some lines long,
And have its especial melody,
Which from the other diff'rent must be.
So staves and sections of such measure
A mastersong may have at pleasure.
He who a new song can outpour
Which in four syllables—not more—
Another strain doth plagiarize,
He may obtain the master prize.

In Germany, too, flourished the folk song. Who wrote the old volkslieder no one knows, but many of them have been preserved to us. The "Limburg Chronicle" contains a number in use between 1347 and 1380, and the "Locheimer Liederbuch" is a collection dated 1452. H. de Zeelandia, in his "Lehrcompendium," gives many in vogue in the first half of the fifteenth century. The essential features of the volkslieder are clearness and symmetry of melody and firmness of rhythm. The early ones also display a constant tendency to escape from the fetters of the ecclesiastical modes. In fact to them is due the final development of modern tonality.

The German church music of the time, from which developed the chorale, was founded on the volkslied. The familiar example of "Isbruck, ich muss dich lassen," set in four parts by Heinrich Isaak in 1475, and adapted after the Reformation by Dr. Hesse as "O Welt, ich muss dich lassen," was but the continuation of the practice of Heinrich von Laufenberg, who in the fifteenth century set sacred words to secular tunes continually. This brief review of the state of music in Germany in the time of the Netherlands school shows us that the volkslied and the meistersong were the ruling powers, and that there was as yet no foreshadowing of the mighty art which has since developed in the land of the Teutons.

In these days existed also the musical guilds which were the forerunners of the continental town orchestras. As far back as the thirteenth century the strolling musicians began to gather in towns, and there they formed societies for the protection of their common interests. Some of them became town pipers, and in the fifteenth century some were made town and corporation trumpeters. One result of the work of the guilds at this time was that musicians began to acquire some of the rights of citizenship. The guilds were accustomed to place themselves under the patronage of some noble, who selected from the guild a "piper king." It was his business to see that "no player, whether he be piper, drummer, fiddler, trumpeter, or performer on any instrument, be allowed to accept engagements of any kind, whether in towns, villages, or hamlets, unless he had previously enrolled himself a member of the guild." At irregular intervals a court was assembled, consisting of a mayor, four masters, twelve ordinary members, and a beadle, whose business it was to mete out punishment to guild offenders. These guilds were simply the musical protective unions of the day. Outside of the German nations, where these guilds did not exist, the ordinary musician was a stroller, with hardly any legal rights and no consideration. His occupation was regarded as menial, and the servants of the knights treated him with contempt. The jongleur who played the accompaniments for the troubadour, or even sang his songs when the master had no voice, was regarded as a servant and nothing more. The idea of any musician being entitled to the consideration of an artist, except the great church composers, would have been scouted.

In England the strolling musician was represented by the minstrel and the waits, and his status was about the same as it was on the Continent. In a somewhat better case were those who were under the protection of some prince or noble. For instance, the children of the chapel ate in the chapel hall with the yeomen of the vestry and were well cared for. They were the young students of choir singing, instructed by a master of song, who was appointed by the dean of the chapel. These children we find as a part of the household establishment of Edward IV., who died in 1483.

The musicians of the Church were in much better circumstances. As far back as the time of William the Conqueror we find that Hereford Cathedral had endowments which included support for seven choristers. We find similar endowments granted to St. Gregory's in 1363; to Wells in 1347; to the collegiate churches of Southwell, in Nottinghamshire; to Beverley, in Yorkshire, and Westminster. At Oxford, New College had an endowment for sixteen choristers, and Magdalen, All Souls', and St. John's had similar funds. Nearer to Okeghem's day the famous Dick Whittington, Lord Mayor of London, in 1424 founded an endowment for choristers in the Church of St. Michael Royal, which he built. Nevertheless, the first recorded case of a salaried organist is that of Leonard Fitz Simon, organist of Trinity College, Oxford, about 1580, at 20s. per year.

Here are two examples of the popular music of the early times,—the first a song by King Thibaut of Navarre, and the second the first part of the old meistersong used by Wagner in "Die Meistersinger":—

[Listen: Thibaut Meistersong]

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[Thibaut Meistersong.]
By King Thibaut of Navarre.

L'au trier per la ma-ti-née

ent'r un bos et un ver-gier

Une pas-to-re ai tro-vé-e

chant-ant pour son en-voi-sier

et di-sait un son pre-mier

chi mi tient-li mais d'a-mour

Tan-tost cel-le par-en-tor

Ka je loi de frai-nier

si li dis sans de-lai-er

Belle, diex vous

doint bon jour.

[Listen: Die Meistersinger]

[View Larger Image Here.]

[Die Meistersinger.]

Ge-ne-sis am

neun und zwan-zig-sten

uns be-richt wie Ja-cob floh

vor sein bru-der E-sau

ent-wicht.

The reader will note that in the first of these there is a clearly marked rhythmic movement of the simplest kind. The tune is distinctly in the modern key of G major, and it is not polyphonic. The second tune is in F major and while its rhythm is not clearly indicated, it is plainly not a polyphonic composition. The directness of this kind of music and its suitability to the expression of simple feelings were bound to make themselves felt sooner or later in music. We are now to examine into the causes which led to the simplification of church music and forced composers to turn their attention more and more to the music of the people.

[Chapter VI]

The Simplification of Music

Causes which led composers toward a less complex style—The Renaissance and the Reformation—The Council of Trent—Palestrina and his music—Last days of the Roman and Venetian schools—The English cathedral composers—Characteristics of the period.

IT is hardly necessary to tell the reader that the methods employed in writing church music prior to the dawn of the seventeenth century were not always judicious. The use of secular tunes together with their texts prevailed for more than two centuries, and led to great laxity in the treatment of the liturgy. In the course of time too many composers came to regard the words of the mass as mere pegs to hang tunes on, and the tremendous complexity of the huge polyphonic works was such that the words could not be distinguished. One part would be singing "gloria in excelsis" while another was thundering "et in terra pax," and there was such a jumble of words and music that, while it was all very imposing, it was not comprehensible to the congregation. As long as the congregation knew very little Latin, and less music, this condition did not have serious effects; but the time had now come when the people began to ask questions. It becomes our duty, then, to inquire what influences led to reforms in church music. I shall first enumerate the influences and afterward discuss them in detail.

1. The revival of Greek learning in Italy after a lapse of seven hundred years.
2. The invention of printing.
3. The Renaissance.
4. Popular music.
5. The diffusion of musical learning among the people.
6. The Lutheran choral hymn and congregational singing.

In 1453 the Turks, under Mohammed II., slew Constantine, last of the Roman emperors, and overthrew Rome's eastern empire, whose capital was Constantinople. The Christian scholars of Turkey fled toward the home capital of their fallen empire, and took up their residence in Italy. These scholars were all masters of the Greek tongue, and they awakened a new interest in it and its literature. The field had been untouched for about seven centuries, and the whole treasury of Greek history, oratory, and poetry was reopened to the Italian mind. Its effects were wide and general. One of them was to lead to the study of the New Testament in the original tongue, and this study very speedily demonstrated the unworthiness of the Latin Vulgate used by the Church. Any blow at Latin was a blow at the authority of Rome. The whole Italian system of worship had been built upon the Vulgate, which was in the language authorized in the Roman Church throughout western Europe, and used as the sole means of intercommunication between its branches in various nations. Doctrines and edicts alike proceeded from Rome in the ancient language of the city, and to throw discredit upon the veracity of that tongue in the Vulgate was to subject it to general doubt and suspicion. Such doubt did certainly spread among the people, who began to demand a clearer comprehension of the liturgy. To this end they desired a less complex setting of the musical part of the church service.

This demand was powerfully backed by the introduction of printing in 1444. This introduction resulted in lowering the price of books, and a plentiful supply of cheap reading attracted readers. Hence the mass of the Roman Catholic laity became readers as well as listeners. The whole system of worship had been based on the existence of a non-reading public. But now the age of popular inquiry began, and it became necessary for church music to abandon its complexity and address itself to meet the demands of awakening intelligence.

The dawn of the Renaissance in art was caused by the revival of Greek learning, which reintroduced Greek models. The enormous effect of a new contemplation by the Italian mind of Doric architecture and Greek sculpture can hardly be comprehended by us to whom these things are so familiar. The force and beauty of simplicity were brought home to the people by the very examples which awoke in them a desire for imaginative life and personal expression. The Renaissance led to a clearer, stronger, more eloquent style in all art, and in time it was bound to make itself felt in music. The fact that Leonardo da Vinci worked before Josquin des Prés proves nothing except that music was behind the other arts in the development of her technic, and had to work out her own laws of existence before she could feel the influence of reformatory thought.

The popular music of the time naturally appealed to composers as their feeling for distinctly outlined form increased, and this feeling was directly influenced by the artistic teachings of the Renaissance. As art remodelled itself on Greek patterns, and architecture found in the Doric lines a relief to the endless details of the Gothic, so music inclined toward the simple contours of the song-forms. The elementary attraction of pure rhythm grew in potency as composers realized more clearly that it was one of the fundamental components of music; and with a recognition of this fact came that of the deeper significance of chord harmony. The folk-song itself had always clung to the major and minor scales, and had not often employed the purely ecclesiastical modes. The mode known as the Ionic—the old Greek Lydian mode, condemned by the ancients as lascivious—was nothing more nor less than our major scale of G, and as such the church composers knew it. Its possibilities made themselves more and more clear as the artistic musicians of the day studied the popular tunes, and so in time it came to its true seat of honor in music.

A knowledge of music had begun to spread among the people. Not only did the constant hearing of the noble masterpieces of their time tend to cultivate their taste, but they began to practise music themselves. Conservatories had been founded in Venice, Rome, and other cities, and as far back as Willaert's day it was fashionable for young ladies of good family to learn to play the monochord, one of the precursors of the piano. The music written for the instrument was precisely like that for the organ, polyphonic in style and learned in treatment. The study of such music was naturally very difficult for beginners, and it became necessary to supply them with something simpler.

The music of the Roman Church was brought into strong contrast with that employed by Luther in his work of the Reformation. Luther insisted on the exercise of individuality in worship. He held, contrary to the Church, that every man had a right to study the Bible for himself. He even gave communion to the laity. In direct line with such work was his revival of congregational singing, which had been generally unpractised since the days of Ambrose. The first Lutheran hymn-book was published in 1524. Luther employed many extant folk songs and caused new tunes like them to be written. He is said to have written "A stronghold sure." These Lutheran hymns were broad and simple chorals, like those of the Protestant Church of today. The spread of their use among the Protestant congregations of the time was an attraction toward that form of worship which the authorities of the Roman Church could not ignore, and hence the Catholic composers moved toward a simpler style.

The story of what followed the recognition of these influences by the fathers of the Church has been very prettily told, but unfortunately it has been of late discredited. The story is that two parties arose in the Church, one of them demanding the abolition of all the extant church music and a return to the plain chant of Gregory, and the other that the music of the time be preserved, but its style simplified. The Council of Trent (1562) discussed the matter, and in 1563 Pope Pius IX. appointed a commission of eight cardinals to take measures of reform. Cardinals Borromeo and Vitellozzi, appointed as a sub-committee, went to Palestrina, whose music had already attracted attention, and asked him to write a mass demonstrating that the church music of the time could be preserved. He entered upon his task with such enthusiasm that he wrote three masses, of which that called the Marcellus mass was performed with enormous success.

This story has been proved to be a myth. The Council of Trent did pass a resolution that a complete reform of church music was necessary, but the demand was based, not on the character of the music, but on the fact that it made the text of the liturgy unintelligible. The Council furthermore issued a mandate to bishops to banish improper music from their churches. This was, of course, aimed at the secular airs, or those which resembled them. The mass of Marcellus was not written to order, and there was nothing new in its style. The mass is simply a model of all that was best in Palestrina's day. It embodied all that was noblest in the polyphonic style developed by the Netherlands school. Its melody is pure, sweet, and fluent, and its expressive capacity perfectly adapted to the devotional spirit of the text. Palestrina's contemporaries, such as Lasso, and some of his predecessors, wrote in the same style. Lasso's "Penitential Psalms" are much simpler in style than this mass. Its apparent simplicity lies in the fact that its profound mastery of technical resources conceals its superb art. The polyphonic writing is matchless in its evenness; every part is as good as every other part. The harmonies are beautiful, yet there is apparently no direct attempt to produce them. They seem just to happen. But above all other qualities stands the innate power of expression in this music. It is, as Ambros has hinted, as if the composer had brought the angelic host to earth.

With Palestrina church polyphony reached its highest and its final development. The search after simplicity led composers in a path diverging widely from the old contrapuntal highway. New developments in secular music were soon to come about, and still more powerfully to influence church composition. The harvest and the glory of vocal counterpoint had come, and thenceforth musical art was to develop along new and hitherto unexpected lines. A few words should be written here concerning the career of so great a man as Palestrina, who has been universally accorded a seat among the Titans of music. His full name was Giovanni Pierluigi Sante, and he was called Palestrina from the place of his nativity. The date of his birth is uncertain, but it was probably 1514. The portrait of him in the pontifical chapel at Rome has an inscription to the effect that he died in 1594, aged eighty. He was the son of poor peasants and got his first musical instruction as a choir singer. In 1540 he went to Rome and became a student in Claude Goudimel's conservatory. At the age of thirty he published his first compositions, and some of them are still heard in the Sistine Chapel occasionally. [6.1] He had previously served a short period as organist and choir master in his native town, and in 1548 he married. In 1551 he succeeded Arcadelt as choir master of St. Peter's, Rome, and the Pope made him one of the singers of the Papal Chapel. In 1571 he was made chapel master of St. Peter's, and later, in conjunction with his younger contemporary Nanini, he founded a music school in Rome. The influence of this school was very great, and it kept the "Palestrina style" alive in Europe for nearly a century. Palestrina died on Feb. 2, 1594, and the Supreme Council of the Church had his body laid in the basilica of the Vatican with the honors usually shown to a cardinal.

[6.1] At the time of writing (October, 1897) Palestrina's works are not performed as often as they used to be in the Papal Chapel, and there is a determined movement on the part of some of the clergy for their restoration and a more frequent use of the Gregorian chant. The movement is a healthful one, and I wish it success.

Before leaving the subject of Palestrina, let me endeavor to make clear to the reader wherein his style is so fine. Composers before him had begun to aim at the simplification of church music. They sought to accomplish their purpose by breaking the shackles of canonic law. The canon had demanded the most exact imitation in the different voice parts. The new style allowed the greatest freedom. The result was that free polyphony took the place of rigid canon. Consequently, composers were able to devote more attention to the development of fluent, beautiful, and expressive melody. The merit of Palestrina's work was that it carried this style to perfection. His compositions became the models for succeeding composers, and indeed they remain to this day unequalled as examples of pure church music. In Palestrina's music one must note the absence of rhythmic effects, of modern tonality, and of the note of passion. Palestrina paid little attention to folk-music, but sought to attain simplicity of style by preserving the old church scales, avoiding chromatic harmonies, and by generally preserving purity and contemplative feeling. His writing is marvellous in its contrapuntal skill, which makes the apparently independent melodies of the different voice parts constantly combine in simple and lovely chords. The lack of contrast in his music has often been quoted as a fault; but it was in accordance with Palestrina's own theory that church music should always be dignified, and should never contain anything exciting.

As we have now reached the period at which artistic music began to develop in all its branches, it will be most convenient to narrate the progress of Roman Catholic church music subsequent to Palestrina's time before passing to other topics. The reader must bear in mind that this music was still designed to be sung without accompaniment, in order that the tone-quality of pure vocal sound might be untainted. When the organ was first used it simply doubled the voice parts, and when independent accompaniments began to be written they considerably altered the character of church music. There were now two distinct schools of Catholic composition,—that of Rome, and that of Venice. The former followed the pure diatonic style of Palestrina; the latter was influenced by the style of Willaert and the chromatic music of Di Rore. The chief masters of the Roman school were Nanini, Vittoria, Anerio, and Allegri. Giovanni Maria Nanini was born in 1540 and died in 1607. He was a coworker with Palestrina, and was the teacher of many of the succeeding composers. His "Hodie nobis cœlorum Rex" is still sung at Christmas in the Papal Chapel. Tommaso Ludovico da Vittoria was born about 1540, and died about 1604. He is regarded as one of the greatest of Palestrina's successors. A goodly number of his works has been preserved. His Requiem, written for the funeral of the Empress Maria (1603), is conceded to be his greatest production, and is one of the most notable compositions of that period. "Technically considered, it is a marvellous blending of old independent movement of parts with modern dissonances and progressions. Spiritually considered, it is a wonderful expression of poignant personal sorrow, chastened by religious contemplation and devotion." The marks of change here are the use of the dissonance and the expression of personal feeling. The dissonance in music embraces all those harmonies which sound harsh to persons accustomed only to elementary chords like the tonic, dominant, and subdominant. They are used most freely in modern operatic music, especially that of Wagner, and have always been employed to express passion of some kind. Palestrina avoided them. Felice Anerio (1560-1630) wrote many admirable masses. Gregorio Allegri (1586-1652) is best known as the composer of very fine "Misere" now sung in Holy Week in the Sistine Chapel. This work is regarded as equal to some of Palestrina's.

The Venetian school, after its earliest period produced two great composers from one family. These were Andrea Gabrieli (1510-1586) and his nephew Giovanni Gabrieli (1557-1613). The former followed Willaert's plan of writing for antiphonal choruses, but he employed most frequently three instead of two. The latter was more of an instrumental composer than his uncle, and hence conceived the idea of writing instrumental accompaniments. In his "Surrexit Christus" he used an orchestral accompaniment of first and second violins, two cornets, and four trombones. This work of Giovanni Gabrieli's fairly marks the termination of the era of a capella (unaccompanied) polyphonic church music. The opera had been born, and so had the oratorio, and church music began to borrow ideas from them. Giovanni Legrenzi (1625-1690) increased Gabrieli's orchestra to nineteen violins, two violas, three viole da gamba, four theorboes (lutes of large size), two cornets, one bassoon, and three trombones. Antonio Lotti (1667-1740) was an opera writer as well as a church composer, and he wrote masses full of passionate feeling. His later works are full of passages in which the voices alternate with the instruments and there are accompanied solos and choruses. With Lotti, who used unaccompanied choruses occasionally, we bid a final farewell to the great period of a capella church music, and enter upon the era in which music for the church was made in the same way as other kinds. The masses of Mozart, Beethoven, Cherubini, and other modern writers are all richly instrumented.

England had fairly kept pace with the Continent in her mastery of polyphony, which so early produced the remarkable canon "Sumer is icumen in." Thomas Tallys (born about 1520, died Nov. 23, 1585) was one of the greatest of the English masters, and is regarded as the father of English cathedral music. His works do not equal those of his contemporaries in inspiration,—he was neither a Lasso nor a Palestrina,—but he had a large command of polyphonic technic. One of his notable works was a motet, entitled "Spem in alium non habui," written for eight choirs of five voices each, in antiphonal style. His best known work, however, is a Litany and Responses. His pupil, William Byrd (born about 1538, died July 4, 1623), wrote many admirable church works notable for the majesty of their style. Orlando Gibbons (died 1625, at the end of the Netherlands period) was the last great light of the English school.

During the whole period of church counterpoint, which never lost the radical elements of its character until after Legrenzi's day, music felt the influence of the old chant and the early study of the canonic style. In concluding the account of this period, I cannot do better than to quote a few luminous sentences from the admirable "Evolution of the Art of Music" by Dr. C. H. H. Parry: "Of definite principles of design beyond this elementary device [the canon] these composers had but few. Their treatment of musical figures and melodic material is singularly vague. The familiar modern practice of using a definite subject [part of a distinct tune] throughout a considerable portion of a movement, or at certain definite points which have a structural importance, was hardly employed at all. The voices, which entered one after another, naturally commenced singing the same words to phrases of melody which resembled each other. But composers' ideas of identity of subject matter were singularly elastic, and even if the first half-dozen notes presented similar contours in each voice part successively, the melodic forms soon melted into something else, and from that point the movement wandered on its devious way without further reference to its initial phrases." This points to one of the fundamental differences between the music of the polyphonic era and that of the monophonic, in which one voice or instrumental part (as the treble of a piano) uttered a melody full of periodical repetitions of the germinal tune-thought, and the other parts supplied an accompaniment of chords. This style of composition was developed first in the opera and afterward by instruments. It will be more convenient to take up the progress of instrumental music first, and at the outset let us review the evolution of the piano.

[Chapter VII]

The Evolution of the Piano

Plucking and striking strings—The dulcimer—Invention of the keyboard—The clavichord and its action—Manner of playing the clavichord—The harpsichord family—Invention of hammer action—Claims of Cristofori—Modern improvements—Equal temperament.

THE piano, like all our contemporaneous musical instruments, is the result of a long development. Its fundamental principle is the setting of a stretched string in vibration by a blow, the vibrations acting upon the air so as to produce sound. A subsidiary principle (subsidiary because common to all stringed instruments, such as violins, harps, or guitars) is the shortening or lengthening of a string in order to obtain a higher or a lower note. In the piano, the application of this principle gives us a number of strings of different lengths. In the violin we have only four strings, but the length of the vibrating part is altered by pressing down the strings at different points with the fingers of the left hand. Before the idea of setting strings in vibration with a bow was conceived, they were plucked with the fingers, as in the case of the harp and the guitar, and it is probable that this is the oldest method of causing strings to sound. The Hebrew kinnor, the first musical instrument mentioned in the Bible (called "harp," Genesis iv. 21), was either a lyre or a small harp, and, according to Josephus, it was played with a plectrum, a small piece of ivory or steel, used to pluck the strings. Egyptian pictures of great antiquity show players using their fingers upon harp strings. At the same time the Egyptians were well acquainted with the principle of dividing a string by pressing upon it with the fingers of the left hand, as is proved by their pictures of lute players.

But the use of a blow to set a string in vibration was also known in very early times. The instrument called a dulcimer, which is always seen now in Hungarian orchestras, is almost as old as the harp. It consists of a number of strings stretched across a shallow box, which acts as a resonator, and set in vibration by two little hammers in the hands of the player. It was this instrument which suggested the hammer action, and it is this action which makes the fundamental difference between the piano and its immediate precursors. An instrument similar to the dulcimer was the citole, the chief difference being that the strings were plucked with the fingers. Add the principle of stopping the strings with the fingers of the left hand, and the citole becomes the zither. In Lydgate's "Reson and Sensualité (circa 1430) "cytolys" are enumerated among other instruments.

The first important step toward the evolution of the pianoforte was the invention of the keyboard. The origin of this important part of the instrument is uncertain. It is probable that it was first applied to the organ. At any rate, it is said that a keyboard of sixteen keys was attached to an organ built in the Cathedral of Magdeburg at the close of the eleventh century, while most historians date the clavichord or the clavicytherium two centuries later. It is possible, however, that some sort of rude arrangement of keys was employed in the monochord, an instrument used for measuring the scientific intervals between notes of different pitch. It is said to have been invented by Pythagoras in the sixth century before Christ. It consisted of an oblong box with one string stretched across it, and a movable bridge for dividing (or stopping) the string at different points. The continual shifting of the bridge was very troublesome, and as early as the second century (according to Claudius Ptolomæus and Aristides Quintilianus) there was a four-stringed instrument called a helicon. It is surmised that the famous teacher Guido d'Arezzo (born about 995) was the first to use the monochord in teaching singing, and that he devised some kind of a keyboard, because in one of his writings he advises his pupils "to practise the hand in the use of the monochord."

The keyboard having been invented, whether for monochord or organ, its application to stringed instruments of the dulcimer or citole family naturally followed. It is impossible to tell whether the first action was a plucking or a striking one, for there are no records, and it is easily conceivable that both may have been used simultaneously in different places. Guido's action is supposed to have consisted of a straight lever with a bridge on the inner end. When the outer end, the key, was struck the bridge arose, gave the string a blow which set it in vibration, and remaining pressed against the string, divided it and determined its pitch. This subsequently became the action of the German clavichord. Another action consisted of a similar straight lever with a piece of quill protruding from the inner end. When the outer end was pressed down the inner end moved past the string and the quill plucked it, causing it to vibrate. This became the action of the clavicytherium, which some writers, without good ground, say was antecedent to the clavichord, and subsequently of the Italian spinet, the harpsichord, and the virginal.

The first mention of the clavichord and harpsichord is found in the "Rules of the Minnesingers," by Eberhard Cersne, A. D. 1404. The celebrated musical theorist, Jean de Muris, of the University of Paris, writing in 1323, and enumerating musical instruments, mentions the four-stringed monochord, but says nothing of the clavichord or harpsichord. This gives reasonable ground for the inference that those instruments were either not invented at that time or had so recently appeared that they were not yet known in Paris, then the centre of musical culture. We are quite safe in assuming that both instruments date from the thirteenth century, and as they were the immediate ancestors of the piano, we must give them especial attention. The famous collection of Mr. Morris Steinert, of New Haven, contains examples in good working order of all the different kinds of clavichords, harpsichords, spinets, and early pianos, and it has been my privilege to examine and play upon all these instruments, thus obtaining a singularly effective object lesson in the history of the piano. The clavichord was always built in oblong shape, like our square piano. The keyboard was precisely like that now used, except that some builders made the naturals black and the sharps and flats white. The principle of the action remained that of the old monochord. The key was pivoted just inside of the front board of the case, and consisted of a single straight shaft of wood. On the inner end was a thin, slablike upright of brass, called a "tangent." When the player struck the outer end of the key, the tangent was driven upward against the string, causing it to vibrate. The tangent also acted as a bridge, and divided the string into two unequal parts, the longer of which gave out the tone. The shorter section was prevented from sounding by a narrow band of cloth interlaced with the strings at that end of the instrument. This band also acted as a damper, and caused the whole string to cease vibrating the moment the tangent was lowered. Clavichords made before 1725 (or about that year) had fewer strings than keys. One string had to produce two and sometimes three tones. This was accomplished by the use of the tangents, which divided the string at different lengths, as the violinist does with the fingers of his left hand. These instruments were known as "gebunden," or bound.

About 1725 Daniel Faber of Crailsheim made instruments with one string for each tone, and such clavichords were called "bundfrei" (bound free) or "ungebunden" (unbound). In the latest clavichords each note had two strings tuned in unison,—a contrivance which gained power at the expense of some of the lovely expressiveness of the instrument.

The reader will understand that, as the clavichord string ceased sounding as soon as the tangent was permitted to drop by lifting the finger from the key, the method of playing it was different from that employed for the piano. A hard blow was of no use; it only twanged the string disagreeably. Pressure, with its direct communication of the finger-touch to the string, was the secret of clavichord playing, and it was this which made the instrument so beautifully responsive to the thought of the performer. By forcing the pressure a little a sort of portamento effect could be obtained, and by causing the finger to shake up and down on the pressed key one could get a faint and pathetic tremolo from the vibrating string. This effect the Germans called "bebung," and it was one of the most familiar graces of clavichord playing. No one who has played upon a clavichord can fail to see how thoroughly the instrument works its way into the confidence and love of an artist, and there is no room for wonder that it was the intimate friend of the great Bach.

It is difficult to arrive at satisfactory conclusions from the statements of early writers in regard to instruments of the harpsichord family. Scaliger, born in 1484, says that Simius, who lived in the last period of Greek music, invented the Simicon. In this the tone was produced by tangents, which were subsequently armed with crow quills to pluck the strings. Adriano Banchieri, in his "Conclusioni nel suono dell' organo" (Boulogne, 1608), said that the spinet, one form of harpsichord, was invented by Giovanni Spinetti, and took its name from him. Banchieri had seen such an instrument with the inscription, "Joannes Spinetus Venetus fecit, A. D. 1503." But the fact that De Muris enumerated the instruments of his time without naming the harpsichord or any of its kindred, while Cersne distinctly mentioned it in 1404, shows that it was certainly much older than either Spinetti or Scaliger. Ottomarus Luscinius, a Benedictine monk, in his "Musurgia" (Strasburg, 1536), describes the virginal, a square instrument, of which the strings were plucked by plectra. Marin Mersenne, born at Oise, in 1588, in his "De Instrumentis Harmonicis," describes the clavicymbalum, which, according to his figure, is the same instrument as the spinet of Banchieri and the virginal of Luscinius.

There were, indeed, several varieties of shapes and many names for what were essentially the same instrument. Some were square, some were trapezoid, like our grand piano, and some were upright, but they all had the same plectral action and produced the same kind of tone. It will be readily understood that these instruments were incapable of gradations of power. No matter how forcibly or how gently the key was pressed, the elasticity of the plucking quill remained constant, and so produced just the same amount of twang from the string. Wooden uprights, called jacks, were placed at the inner ends of the key levers, where the tangents were in clavichords, and the quills ran through them. In some instruments pieces of hard leather were used instead of quills. Bach was acquainted with the harpsichord, though he always preferred the clavichord. Handel, Scarlatti, and Mozart were all great harpsichord performers. The instrument held its favor among musicians for a considerable time after the introduction of the piano, to which it finally had to yield the supremacy.

The first famous harpsichord builder was Johannes Baffo, Venice, 1574, but the most celebrated makers were: Hans Ruckers, Antwerp, 1575; Andreas Ruckers, his son, 1614, Tschudi and Kirkman, the English builders of Handel's day. Kirkman built harpsichords with two banks of keys and several sets of strings, which were controlled by stops similar to those of an organ. This was an attempt to overcome the dynamic monotony of the instrument, but I can testify from careful trial of the fine Kirkman harpsichords in the Steinert collection that the attempt was not a brilliant success. You can get an approximate idea of the sound of a harpsichord by plucking the strings of a modern piano with the plectrum of a mandolin, or with a common quill toothpick.

The invention which overthrew the clavichord and the harpsichord and brought into existence the piano was the hammer action. For years the problem of applying the keyboard to the principle of the dulcimer, already explained, had occupied the minds of instrument builders. The solution was the work of Bartolomeo Cristofori, born at Padua, May 4, 1653, and it was made public in 1711. Two others claimed the honor: Gottfried Silbermann and Christopher G. Schröter. In 1726 Silbermann made two pianos and showed them to Bach, who condemned them because of their heavy touch and the weakness of their trebles. Silbermann was discouraged, but according to Agricola, a contemporary writer, he worked at improvements upon his instruments, and sold one of them to Frederick the Great, in whose music room it stood till 1880. It was then examined by Bechstein, the leading German piano maker of today, who found that it contained the Cristofori action. The priority of Cristofori's claims is established by an article written by Scipione Maffei and printed in the "Giornale dei Litterati d'Italia," in 1711, with a diagram of the inventor's hammer action. A translation of Maffei's article will be found in Rimbault's "The Pianoforte." (London, 1860.) It was also published in German in Matheson's "Musikalische Kritik," in Hamburg, 1725, so that the contemporaries of Silbermann and Schröter ought to have known of Cristofori's work. Indeed, Schröter's claim was made by himself in a letter written in 1738, which appears to have been evoked by irritation at Cristofori's glory.

It should be noted here that in the letters of an instrument maker named Paliarino, written in 1598, the instrument "piano e forte" is twice mentioned. It has been conjectured, and probably rightly, that this was a harpsichord with contrivances for loud and soft effects, for it is unlikely that even a rude hammer action could have been in existence more than a century before Cristofori's invention. It is, however, probable that some attempts were made before his, for his was altogether too satisfactory to have been anything but the result of a development. Nevertheless it was the first hammer action of permanent value, and its essential principles are employed in the finest actions of today. Therefore Cristofori fairly deserves the honor of inventing the piano. The instrument, however, did not gain great favor in Italy, owing to the inability of the harpsichord players to acquire the right touch, and it soon fell into disuse. Silbermann, however, following the details of Maffei's letter before-mentioned, built pianos, and other German makers, notably Friederici of Gera, who is said to have made the first square piano, followed his lead. At least as early as 1766 Johannes Zumpe built square pianos in England.

It would fill a volume to narrate the history of the successive steps in the development of the piano since the days of Zumpe. It is possible, however, to point out a few of the important steps. The famous maker, John Andrew Stein, Augsburg, was a pupil of Silbermann, and was born in 1728. He left a son, Andrew, also a maker, and a daughter, Nanette, who became Mrs. Streicher, and was the head of a great piano house in Vienna. The elder Stein's pianos were admired by Mozart, while Nanette Streicher's pianos were used by Beethoven. Before the time of the elder Stein the forte and piano effects, which gave the instrument its name, and which were then as now, produced by the action of the dampers, were obtained by operating "two iron springs, ornamented with copper knobs, in that part of the chest nearest the bass. In order to move these springs it was necessary that the player should use his left hand, and consequently he was obliged for a moment to quit the keyboard. Stein improved these springs by making them act by means of knobs placed against the knees." The modern pedals are first found in John Broadwood's patent of 1783. The pedals have been much improved since that time, and have played a very conspicuous part in the development of piano playing and of piano music. The "loud" pedal, as it is commonly called, is less used by pianists to gain force than to prolong sound, which before its invention could only be done by keeping the keys pressed down. With the dampers raised by the "loud" pedal, the strings struck continue to vibrate, while the fingers are free to go on striking other keys. This enables pianists to do far more than they could in early times in the way of producing sustained tones and modulations of harmony, and hence composers for the instrument are able to write passages which would formerly have been impossible.

Double, and even triple, stringing had been introduced in clavichords, and was continued in pianos. The elder Stein invented the shifting of the keyboard which causes the hammer to strike only one string instead of three. This contrivance is used by some of the best makers of the present day. Stein also improved the "escapement," the arrangement by which the hammer falls back the instant it has struck the string, and this, with other features of the action, was further developed by Streicher, so that the Viennese pianos became famous for the extreme lightness of their touch, and music written by composers in that part of the world was designed to meet this quality. The English pianos, meanwhile, were built with heavier strings and a deeper fall of the hammer, so that greater sonority was attainable, and composers wrote for them bold passages in successions of heavy chords, which would have gone for nothing on a Viennese piano. At the very outset Cristofori had to shift the pins to which the wires were attached, from the soundboard, which would not stand the strain, to a separate rail. It became necessary to brace the whole interior with steel arches, of whose inventor there is no record, but Broadwood was the first to introduce the method now employed. Sebastien Érard, a celebrated French maker, introduced many improvements in the action and devised what was called then the "celeste" pedal, by which the hammers struck a strip of leather interposed between them and the strings. The leather is now replaced by felt. The iron frame, now replaced by steel and found in all fine pianos, was invented by Alpheus Babcock of Boston in 1825. Frederick W. C. Bechstein, of Berlin, in 1855 combined iron frames and the powerful English action in his instruments, and took a commanding position. The upright piano was patented Feb. 12, 1800, by John Isaac Hawkins of Philadelphia. Subsequent developments in the piano have been of too wide a range to be mentioned in the space at my command, and at any rate have all been in the nature of improvements,—highly important, indeed, but without radical departure from the fundamental features of the instruments.

A few words, however, must be said on the subject of equal temperament. Previous to the time of Bach and Jean Philippe Rameau, the scale of the piano was arranged according to the laws of acoustics. It is impossible to enter into this fully, but the result was that a piano could not be tuned to play in all the twenty-four keys. This is difficult to explain, but I shall endeavor to make it clear. The pitch of a tone is determined by the number of vibrations it makes in a second, and it follows that there must be a regular ratio of increase in the number of vibrations of the notes of a scale as we proceed upward. This establishes the scientific basis of the scale. Now, any one who is at all acquainted with the piano knows that the same black key is struck to produce either C sharp or D flat. But this has been true only since Bach's day. Previous to that time instruments were timed according to the scientific laws, and by these we find that the C of the third octave has 256 vibrations, the C sharp 266.66, and the D flat 276.48. Thus D flat is a higher note than C sharp, and scientifically requires a differently tuned string and a separate key. The same trouble confronts us with most other notes, so that "theory requires no less than seventy-two keys to the octave in order that the musician may have complete command over all the keys employed in modern music."

In order to reduce the octave to twelve semitones with twelve keys and to make the sharps and flats agree, as they do now, the system of equal temperament deliberately puts out of tune every interval except the octave. By slightly lowering some and raising others, the present scale was obtained. Its advantage is that it makes it practicable to play in all twenty-four keys, and because of the identity of the sharps and flats it becomes easy to modulate from one key to another. For instance, C sharp, which is the distinguishing note of the scale of D major, is also D flat, and thus it becomes easy to modulate from D to D flat, which leads to G flat, a very remote key. This gives the modern composer immense freedom of style, and adds greatly to the key complexity of music, whereas, before the adoption of the system of equal temperament, composers had to confine themselves to a few closely related keys.

Who invented the system of equal temperament, no one knows. It is mentioned in the "Harmonic Universelle" of Marin Mersenne, the French writer before quoted, but it is quite certain that it was not extensively employed before the time of Bach, who brought the system to practical perfection, and demonstrated it in his "Well-Tempered Clavichord," a set of twenty-four preludes and fugues going through all the keys. The science of equal temperament was first set forth in a satisfactory manner by Jean Philippe Rameau, the French opera composer, in his "Traité de l'Harmonie," Paris, 1722.

[Chapter VIII]

The Evolution of Piano Playing

Work of the organ schools of Venice and Rome—Polyphonic playing and the advent of the singing style—Scale playing and the use of the thumb—Bach's fingering and Mozart's vocal playing—Development of tone-color—Pedalling and variety of touch—Chopin, Schumann, and Liszt technics.

THE origin of piano music, and, indeed, of much of the entire mass of modern instrumental music, was the organ compositions of the early masters. The early clavichords were used almost exclusively for the home practice of organists; and even after it became fashionable for young ladies to learn the art of playing, there was no difference whatever between the style of music written for the organ and of that composed for the clavichord, nor in the manner of playing either instrument. Every musician knows that in our time the kind of touch used for the organ is essentially different from that used for the piano, and that music suitable for one instrument is not suitable for the other. But it was not thus in the earliest days; for the only professional pianists (or clavichordists, to be more precise) were the organists, and instrumental music had not yet reached a state of development high enough to produce a divergence of styles. The fact that the same keyboard was used in both instruments was sufficient to suggest to the early organists that one style of playing was practicable for both. It naturally did not occur to them to write different sorts of music; and it is necessary, therefore, for us to inquire what was the nature of the early organ music.

We have already seen that when the organ was first introduced into the church it was employed simply to play the same notes as the voices sang. This practice naturally suggested to composers a style for their organ music when they began to write for the organ independently of the voices. Just when they began to do that it is not possible to say, because the early compositions have not been preserved as the great masterpieces of church counterpoint have. The first organist of repute whose name has come down to us was Francesco Landini, of Venice. He flourished about 1364. But we do not meet with any definite school of organists in Venice until the third period of the Netherlands school, when the great Adrian Willaert was the leading master. In 1547 was published a collection of music entitled "Ricercari da cantare e sonare," by Jacob Buus. These "ricercari" were compositions in the old ecclesiastical keys and the polyphonic style. "Da cantare e sonare" means that they were to be sung or played. Anything "cantata" was vocal, anything "sonata" was instrumental; and so after a time they began to call a composition for instruments alone a sonata, though it was a very different sort of work from a sonata by Mozart. In 1549 fantasies for three voices, vocal or instrumental, by Willaert were printed. Willaert used original themes in his fantasies, and his style shows a gradual approach to the modern manner. In 1551 was issued a collection by various authors, entitled "A New Collection of Various Kinds of Dances to be Played on the Harpsichord, Clavicimbal, Spinet, or Monochord." The word "dances" is very significant, because it shows the first recorded effort to write instrumental music in purely instrumental form. In this collection there was no polyphony, but the melody of the dance was in the treble, and the bass was a simple chord accompaniment. This is an evidence of the manner in which the music of the people began at that early date to influence compositions for instruments.

But the dominion of church counterpoint was not to be overthrown at once; and so we find that the first clearly defined instrumental form was the "toccata." Those of Claudio Merulo, a Venetian organist, printed in 1598, were the first to be published. They were written for the organ, and resembled Willaert's church vocal music in that they consisted of running or polyphonic passages, followed by successions of broad chords. Giovanni Gabrieli did more, perhaps, than any other of the Venetians to lead instrumental music toward the modern style. He wrote what he called "canzone;" and in these compositions the melody assumed a position of importance. Furthermore, he showed a tendency to make his melodic themes recur at regular intervals, although he had no well-defined system. Still, he made important advances. The Roman school of organists made valuable contributions to the development of instrumental music. Girolamo Frescobaldi (1591-1640) wrote ricercari in which there was something like a systematic employment of clear melodic themes. He wrote canzone in which there were passages slightly resembling the choral hymns of the Reformation; and in his "Capriccio Chromatico" he made a bold use of chromatic harmonies. Indeed, his music shows a general tendency toward the modern major and minor keys. We are not surprised, then, to find in the works of Bernardo Pasquine (1637-1710) arpeggios (running passages composed of the notes of chords, much used in modern piano music), flowing passages for both hands, and repetitions of the thematic ideas. But the manner of composing for the clavichord and harpsichord had been so greatly influenced at this time by the evolution of a distinct method of playing the instruments that we must, before advancing any further, go back and briefly review that topic.

The first systematic method of playing the organ and harpsichord was set forth in 1593 in a book by Girolamo di Ruta, a Venetian, and it contained rules for fingering which were in use for more than a century. A work by Lorenzo Penna, published at Bologna in 1656, shows very clearly what the general principles of clavichord and harpsichord technic were in that day. "In ascending the fingers of the right hand move one after the other,—first the middle, then the ring finger, again the middle, and so on in alternation. Care must be taken that the fingers do not strike against one another. In descending, the middle, followed by the index finger, is used. The left hand simply reverses this process. The rule for the position of the hands is that they shall never lie lower than the fingers, but shall be held high, with the fingers stretched out." This style of fingering held its own until Bach's time. It was in existence as late as 1741, though more fingers were employed. But the fingers were still held straight, and the thumb was not used.

It is difficult to separate the purely musical and the purely technical causes which led to the abandonment of the polyphonic style for the monophonic in piano music, and for that reason I must state them together. The first influence was the introduction of solo singing in vocal music. We shall review the history of that when we take up opera. It is sufficient at present to say that before 1600 all vocal music written by the art composers was in the ecclesiastical polyphonic style, and that the single-voiced song with accompaniment entered vocal music at the end of the sixteenth century. The influence of this new element made itself felt in instrumental music at once. We have noticed already that in Giovanni Gabrieli's works the melody assumed a new importance, and this importance constantly increased. The second cause was the full establishment of the difference between piano and organ technic. This was chiefly due to Domenico Scarlatti (1683-1757). It was in his day that the system of equal temperament was made known, though it may be doubted whether he lived long enough after its publication in those times of slow communication to profit by it. But he certainly did profit by the high state of excellence to which the manufacture of harpsichords had advanced. And he was greatly influenced by the operatic works of his father, Alessandro, in which the simple aria was the chief element of attraction. Domenico naturally endeavored to imitate the general form and melodic fluency of the aria in his sonatas, and in doing this he developed a harpsichord style of much beauty. He introduced many technical features which are purely modern, such as the execution of runs in double notes (thirds and sixths), the rapid repetition of the same note by striking it with different fingers in succession, and running arpeggios with both hands in opposite directions. Such feats were not called for by the polyphonic music, but the new style of writing made a great use of passages built on the successive notes of the scale, and to execute these a new manner of playing had to be evolved. In evolving it the musicians discovered new feats, and these in turn took their place in the compositions of the time.

In fact the development of the instrument itself affected the development of the technics of playing, and these affected the evolution of piano music. Then the music itself reacted on the technic, and this made new demands of the instrument makers. We have seen that when the early pianists set about the formulation of rules for playing their instruments they made poor work of it. Their rules were arbitrary and were not evolved from a study of the natural action of the hand. Smooth running of scale passages with such rules as those of Lorenzo Penna could be accomplished only at a very moderate pace. The old polyphonic compositions for the clavichord and harpsichord demanded of the player a technic which would enable him to bring out clearly the three or four voice parts. The new style, which borrowed so much from vocal music, naturally sought for a smooth, flowing, even performance, in which the instrument should, as nearly as possible, sing like a solo voice with accompaniment. Emmanuel Bach, who wrote an important book on clavichord playing, proclaimed his belief that the singing style was the only true one for the instrument. These early musicians had, indeed, arrived at the heart of the matter, for the highest achievement of piano technic today is the preservation of a pure singing tone throughout the intricacies of modern music.

The discovery of the value of the thumb revolutionized clavichord and harpsichord playing. George Frederick Handel (1685-1759) and François Couperin (1668-1733) both made free use of the thumb, but it was Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) who systematized its employment. He decided that the old position of the hand with the back flat and the fingers stretched to their full extent was unnatural. He saw that the whole strength of the fingers could not be brought to bear while they were in this position, and that the thumb could not be placed upon the keyboard at all. When he attempted to use his thumb, he had to raise the back of his hand and bend his fingers, and this he saw at once placed the whole hand in a position of command over the keyboard which it had never before possessed. He therefore rearranged the fingering of all the scales, introducing the system which still continues in use. Bach himself discovered that with his new system of fingering he could play polyphonic or monophonic music with equal ease, and hence we find that his compositions abound in both kinds of writing. He himself, being a church composer, naturally clung to the ecclesiastic style, and in his great organ and piano fugues transferred the whole contrapuntal science of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to instrumental music. But we shall see that better when we come to a consideration of the music apart from the technic and the style.

The singing style of playing was further developed by the immortal Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791). The instrument on which he played was the harpsichord, and the evenness of its tone encouraged his natural predilection for a vocal style. Mozart was a master of writing for singers, as is shown by his operas, and he readily saw his way to preserving the vocal manner in his playing of the harpsichord and his compositions for it. He held that a good pianist should have a perfect legato style (legato means "bound," and legato style is that in which the notes flow smoothly one into the other) a singing touch and a manner without affectation. Mozart did not live long enough to benefit much from the growing acquaintance with the newly invented piano, but one of his contemporaries, who outlived him by more than two-score years did so. This was Muzio Clementi (1752-1832), a man of no genius in composition, but of exceptional capacity for the reception of suggestions from his instrument. Clementi's mind appears to have been largely occupied with the problem of the possibilities of the piano. Yet he was not wholly devoted to the development of power and rapidity, for after a memorable meeting with Mozart he cultivated the singing style more assiduously than he had previously. He lived through a period of vital growth in music, for he was a contemporary of Haydn, Mozart, Weber and Beethoven. It would have been strange had he been insensible to the productions of such an era. In his youth, and indeed through most of his life he lived in England, and there he formed his early style on the English piano, which had thick strings, a heavy touch and a deep hammer fall. The result was that his music abounded in bold and brilliant passages of octaves, thirds, and sixths. He aimed at a sonorous and imposing musical diction, and he demanded of a pianist great physical power. Clementi's piano technic was the first which was clearly differentiated from that of the harpsichord and his "Gradus ad Parnassum" (1817) a series of 100 studies, remains to this day the foundation of solid piano playing. Many things have since been added to piano technic, but Clementi's rules lie at the base of it.

The works of Beethoven, to which more extended attention will be given hereafter, introduced nothing strictly new in the technic of piano playing, but they did compel certain changes in style. Beethoven wrote often in a new kind of polyphony, more free and striking than that of the early composers for the clavichord and harpsichord, and very much more difficult. This new polyphony was made practicable by the technics of Clementi, but it required an attention on the part of the pianist to the enunciation of the several voice parts not required by Clementi's music. Again Beethoven displayed great originality in the treatment of musical rhythms, and the proper accentuation of notes having unexpected emphases required unusual independence of finger. This independence was highly developed by Beethoven's successors, and at the present day is absolutely indispensable to piano playing. But the most important demand of Beethoven's piano music was dramatic style. His music, as we shall see later, was the first outside of opera in which the expression of passion was sought, and this expression required that the pianist should have at his command a great range of force, from the gentlest pianissimo to the most imposing fortissimo, and a wide variety of what is called tone-color. This tone-color means quality of instrumental tone, and in a piano it is capable of many changes, hard or soft, sweet or harsh, melting or icy, as the necessities of the music require.

Beethoven, having departed by reason of the dramatic nature of his music, from the continually smooth legato of Mozart, paved the way for Weber, Chopin, Schumann, and Liszt to develop the highest powers of expression in the piano. To do this they had to carry variety of touch to its present state of progress and to evolve the modern use of the pedals, for tone-color is produced by different combinations of touch and pedalling. Weber imparted a new and joyous brilliancy to piano music, and much of his music requires a luxuriant richness of color. Beethoven had begun to make use of the pedals and in his last piano sonatas explicit directions are given for their use. Weber's music requires still more extended employment of them, but it was Chopin who systematized their use and showed how to get varieties of tone-color by employing them separately or in combination. Again, Chopin remodelled the Bach system of fingering by adapting some of the early methods to modern music. It is quite common now in certain kinds of passages to pass the third finger over the little one of the right hand or the little one under the third. Chopin wrote new kinds of passages of great beauty which cannot be played without resorting to this expedient and to others introduced by him.

Schumann added more to piano playing by writing in a very original style. His rhythms are very much involved, he treats accompaniments in an unusual manner, and he writes "interlocking" passages, in which both hands have to participate. To play Schumann's music well, a pianist must go through a special series of exercises to fit his hands for the work. Finally Liszt, who felt that the piano was as capable an instrument as the orchestra, if rightly treated, gave us the present development of the varieties of touch. He wrote studies designed to give pianists the most complete independence of finger,—a very necessary thing in modern piano music, in which very often two fingers of one hand may be engaged in enunciating a melody while the other three are assisting in the accompaniment. Liszt showed us the immense value of the loose wrist, without which the velvety quality of tone produced, when required, by such pianists as himself, Rubinstein, and Paderewski, is quite unattainable. Liszt taught his pupils to hold the wrist high, but more recent players use either a high or a low position accordingly as they desire sonority and brilliancy or mellowness and gentleness.

The whole development of piano playing has, of course, gone hand in hand with that of piano music, and that has followed the course of music in general. It becomes necessary, then, for us now to review the evolution of piano music. We have seen how it grew out of organ playing and was at first polyphonic. We have seen how the monophonic style—the melody with accompaniment—came in. We must now try to see how the polyphonic style worked itself out in the great compositions of Bach, and how the monophonic style developed itself in a new and highly organized form, the sonata, whose fundamental principles lie at the basis of all modern composition.

[Chapter IX]

Climax of the Polyphonic Piano Style

The development of the instrumental fugue—What is a fugue?—Its combination of polyphony with development of a theme—Johann Sebastian Bach and his organ and clavichord fugues—Fundamental traits of this music.

WHEN instrumental music began to develop independently it naturally followed the lines already followed by vocal music. That had been wholly contrapuntal, and instrumental music was at first entirely polyphonic. In its development the art of music inevitably fashioned certain forms, for no art can exist without form, which is the external demonstration of design. Without design there is no art. Musicians very soon learned that the first principle of form in music was repetition. A phrase of melody once heard and never repeated is quickly forgotten. A dozen different phrases in succession would not make a recognizable tune. The germinal part of the tune has to be heard often, and there must be a beginning, a middle and an end. For example:—

[Listen: Germinal, Middle, Germinal, End]

[View Larger Image Here.]

[|--germinal part--|--middle--|--germinal part--|--end--|]

Now this is a melody in the pure song form, such as the earliest popular music contained. But the church composers, the only scientific musicians of the early day, in ignoring that form, as we have seen, developed a scheme of repetition of the identifying parts of their tunes by making the different voices sing them at different times. And this scheme evolved the art of polyphonic writing, which we have seen developed so beautifully by the Netherlands masters and the early Italian church composers. The reader will remember that the principle which lies at the foundation of polyphonic writing is "imitation." After instrumental music began to develop independently it clung for a time to the forms based on imitation, but when the vocal style became dominant in Italy, owing to the enormous popularity of the opera, imitation and its forms fled into Germany, where they found their highest embodiment in instrumental music in the North German fugue. The fugue is the most complex and highly organized polyphonic form we have, and it is necessary that the reader should know something of its construction.

A fugue has been defined as "a musical composition developed, according to certain rules of imitation, from a short theme or phrase called the subject. This subject is from time to time reproduced by each of the two, three, four, or more parts or voices for which the fugue is written." The subject, then, is a definite theme, of from four to eight measures, from which the fugue is developed. The next essential part is the answer. This is the first appearance of the subject in one of the subsidiary voices. This appearance is always in the dominant key, and usually has its last notes changed so as to make an ending. The counter-subject is that part of the theme of the first voice which forms the accompaniment to the answer. The announcement of these parts of the fugue is called the exposition. After the exposition the composer works up the melodic ideas of his material in passages of double counterpoint, free imitation, and various other polyphonic devices, all distributed so as to give interest and variety to the fugue, until he reaches the stretto, a portion in which by ingenious changes he brings out a climax, after which he may add a coda (tail-piece) and come to an end. Here is an example by Sir Frederic A. Gore-Ouseley:—