Chapter IX: Liszt and the Present Time 271 (3)

The music of Couperin is as simple as possible. But we must not judge its sound by the somewhat heavy pianofortes of our time, which, even in the playfulness of a rapid passage, seem conscious of an _arrière pensée_. No; the spinet, which, even at its saddest, had a joyous exhilaration--this was the instrument of this playful music. The passages glide on, usually in two voices, of which the one is played by the right hand, the other by the left; and whether these voices are tied in chords or chord passages, or whether--as occurs more rarely--full chords, usually arpeggio, stand between, in either case there is a delicacy which recalls to us the origin of French clavier-music in the sweet-toned lute. But Couperin advanced yet further. In his last “Ordres” his compositions increase in depth; the more luxuriant conceptions and deeper feelings of a lesser Beethoven show themselves; the playful and ornamental element recedes into the background, and the compositions become those of a master who has summed up whole centuries of music in himself. From the insipid melodies of Lully’s time Couperin has fashioned more graceful and charming turns of expression; not only roguishly dancing-melodies, in which the vigorous popular songs seem to live again, but also melodies of the intellect, in which the soul of Mozart might seem to dwell. He prefers to advance in the diatonic scale; and the sense for the general outline of the composition, which is so often wanting in the older generation, is in him so unerring that he permits, with inimitable skill, the semiquavers of his “papillons” to sway up and down through entire bars. Yet occasionally his melodies seem ashamed of their nakedness, and, as in the “Sailor’s Song,” draw the flowery robe of adornments so closely round them that we can scarcely trace their limbs. There are the well-known short and long grace-notes, upper or lower, the _pincés_, _ports de voix_, _tremblements_, and the whole apparatus of ornamentation, which was then larger than it is now, and which, in spite of the stern admonitions of the composer’s marks, was frequently at the mercy of the performer. Like almost all composers of that day, Couperin gives in his first volume the table of his ornamentations, but he insists strongly on their exact carrying out. To players of to-day his _agréments_ are anything but pleasant. They seem to destroy our sense for the pure run of the voices, and are painful in their superabundance. But we must play them with _historical_ fingers, and seek to understand the psychology of their expression. They give to the quick clavier-tone a significance of its own; they are, so to speak, running drills, cutting the tones deeper into the relief of the piece, some more, some less, until they bring out the light and shade which serve to aid expression in the material of the clavier. Could we hear Couperin play, we should certainly hear the pure voice more distinctly than we imagine, enfolded as it would be here and there by deeper or brighter shadows of the ornamentations which bring out its form in plastic manner. His was a technique which was lost to us with the thorough comprehension of this music. Couperin took pains to bring it to the highest perfection. At times he introduced a slight tempo rubato; he took from the note at the conclusion something of its length, and gave to another at the beginning a short pause for breath, inventing for the former the mark of aspiration, for the latter that of suspension. Here the endeavour was the same as with Prall-triller[41] and grace-notes. Instead of the ornamentation, the short pause, like the white mounting of a picture, raises the important note, giving to it its meaning and with the meaning the due expression. But later, in the last “Ordres,” Couperin must have felt the inadequacy of these marks. The aspirations and suspensions retreat into the background, while the sign ) becomes more prominent. This sign simply marks off an independent musical phrase in order to resign its due interpretation to the sympathetic feeling of the player. Such is the trouble he takes with the traditional style of ornamentation and its spiritual expression.

But the remaining musical peculiarities of his composition follow the simplest lines of development. Freedom of motive increases. Tremolo accompaniments, interesting sequences, a playful counterpoint--this latter especially in the pieces for two claviers, or in the “Pièces croisées” for clavier with two manuals--in fact an inexhaustible array of new forms arises. Thus the harmonisation simplifies itself along with the advance of the entire musical development. Couperin modulates, into the dominant or sub-dominant, by means of their related notes, in major and minor keys. By his turn for repetitions of short figures on changing basses--a truly modern motive--or by bold passages of passing notes--for instance, in the saraband “La Majestueuse,” we find once e flat, d, f sharp, g, a, one over another--he gives us interesting harmonies, which appear, especially in the _allemandes_, as full, heavy chords, already anticipating Bach.

The theatre of Couperin is rich and varied. The representations which we see in this theatre under the innumerable titles of the pieces, range over the whole world. Some of the characters are also not strange to us; others we soon learn to know; a few remain unintelligible to us since the relations they betoken are too subjective. But all lend to the pieces a personal value and an intimate charm, as Goya’s editions present them to us; and it is from them that the clavier derives its great significance as interpreter of this intimate personal art.

“Nanette” greets us with her pleasant quavering melody; “Fleurie” is more subtle, and sways delightfully in richly-adorned 6/8 time; the “Florentine” blooms in graceful, gentle play of quick triolet-figures; but the “Garnier” has the dress of the confined fantastic time, having not yet cast off her heavy folds. “Babet” is “nonchalamment” contented; “Mimi” has a temperament which the many slurs and points of the ornamentation can scarcely fully exhibit. “Conti” (or “les Graces incomparables”) works lullingly out her counterpoint; “Forqueray” (or la Superbe) has a physiognomy of almost academic severity. Many ladies pass by us in these pastel-portraits. We are amused with the divine Babiche (Les amours badins) and the beautiful Javotte (or the “Infanta”); but the most beautiful in melody is Sœur Monique, an intellectually delicate creation, and the most beautiful in construction is “La Couperin” (perhaps the musician’s cousin Louise) who poses before us in a masterly, stately, and slightly fugal movement.

Then follow the troops of nameless ones. First the nuns--the blondes in the minor and the brunettes in the major section. Then the charming and melodious representatives of landscapes: Ausonian, Bourbon, Charlerois, Basque. Then the “Enchantress,” who of course in process of time suffered much from her magic. Then the “Working Woman,” who finishes her course, but is surpassed in it nevertheless by the “Diligent One.” The “Flatterer” and the “Voluptuous Woman” are a relatively quiet pair. The “Gloomy One” is sharply defined, with her dismal, jerky passages, and the heavy full chords. The “Sad One” exhibits the light sentimentality of all archaic melodies. The “Spectre” sweeps past in slurred thirds. Close behind come the “Gray Women” with their ponderous sad march. The “Fox-Tail” has tripping broken chords; the “Lonely One” shows her caprices in the rapid successions of grave and gay. Then follow, in endless succession, the “Princesse d’Esprit,” “l’Insinuante,” “l’Intime,” “la Galante,” “la Douce et Piquante,” faithful ones, _risqué_ ones, bold, visionary, mysterious ones, with their chromatic descents. “Le Turbulent” is one of the few men in the list.

His more general portraits are the most satisfying. They depict emotions, characters, animals, plants, landscapes, occupations, bits from all kinds of life, which are often inscribed with the favourite antique titles. Thus “Diana” with her broken chords leads us into the forest, and shortly after in the second part we hear her horns sounding; while in the “Hunt” a more romantic note is struck. In a broad violoncello-like “Romance” the wood gods are singing and the satyrs dance a very melodious and attractive Bourrée. The Amazon rushes on in thirds, which bear a striking likeness to the _leit-motif_ of Die Walküren; and Atalanta runs past in rapid figures. Hymen and Amor sing a marriage-song, the former in the first part more firmly, the latter in the second more delicately and tenderly. The Bells of Cythera sound to us from the holy island, rising and falling alternately, enlivened by glissando-passages. This motive Couperin adopted a second time in “Les Timbres.”

The Bees hum and revolve round one point; the Butterflies flutter past in ravishing triplets; the Fly buzzes and dances round her own melody; the retiring Linnet hurries through restless triplets; the complaining Grasshopper chirps in endless imitative short grace-notes; the Eel twists itself now tightly, now loosely; the Amphibian creeps along in legato notes, winding itself through bar-sections of Schubertian length; the Nightingale in Love sings her piercing plaintive accents in quick and ever quicker trills, or as Victor chants more joyfully and triumphantly. Or, again, blooming lilies rise before us in delicate self-enfolding figures with petal-like ornamentations; the sedge rustles eternally to its melody; the poppy spreads abroad a wonderful secret mysterious tune, with many slow arpeggio thirds; and garlands twine themselves in festal guise on a canonic trelliswork.

Life unfolds itself in its entire wealth. Here we have the rolling play of the waves, there the purling and rippling of the brooks, and the twittering of the birds--a foretaste of the slow movement of the Pastoral Symphony. Then again, under the name of “Bontemps ou l’étincelante,” an appeal is made to the emotions of springtide or fair weather; we live as it were in a small forest of enchantment. In the second part--Les Grâces Naturelles--one of Couperin’s most intellectual melodies breaks forth, showing all the chaste delicacy of Mozart. There rises the blooming landscape of St Germain en Laye; farther off we catch a sight of teeming orchards from which the music of bagpipes sounds forth. The reapers draw nigh with cheerful song; the buffoons--males in minor and female in major--stir their happy limbs; the jugglers appear and ply their tricks;--we can hardly distinguish the trick and its solution, or the rapid intermingling of left and right hand--the knitters lace their rolling semiquavers together right to the “falling meshes” at the end; the click-clack of the lace-makers--tic, toc, choc, tic, toc, choc--beats joyfully hither and thither in the broken chords of a _pièce croisée_. Even the milk-maids of Bagnolet have their appropriate pieces. There the gossipping wife--a reminiscence of Jannequin--beats her rapid bubbling motive; there the short rolling courses of the famous little windmills play their humorous part; here hobbles a cheery lame man along; there staggers a _bizarre_, syncopated, now swift, now slow Chinese. “The Man with the queer Body” makes his springs, in scattered notes, and close by stands the idyll of “Dodo,” or “Love in the Cradle,” the bass of which rocks itself to and fro in a _pièce croisée_. “Wavering shadows” glide ghost-like in sadly-sounding movements throughout this play of life.

The “Sentiments,” full of feeling, with their beautiful “anticipation” notes, the long legato-movement of the “Idées Heureuses,” the “Regrets” and “Amusements” musically darting to and fro, the syncopated tender “L’Ame en Peine,” the wonderful “Langueurs Tendres,” the somewhat lengthy “Charmes,” the “Agréments” with _their_ agréments, the free diatonic of the various morning melodies,[42] the gentle toying of the “Bagatelles,” of the “Petit Rien,” of the “Brimborions,” the rapture-like “Saillie”--these are inward reflexes which have not quite the clear sensuousness and realism of the outer experiences. The following are the most elaborately worked out, and are presented in “cycle” form.

The “Earlier Ages” appear in four figures--the first exercise gives the syncopated “Muse naissante,” the second the rocking “Enfantine,” the third the rioting “Adolescente,” the fourth the “Délices” in violoncello style, which is Couperin’s favourite for the attainment of the most delightful effects.

Or the great “Shepherds’ Feast” with the twanging musettes of Taverni or Choisy, and the lightly rocking rhythms.

Or the five-act Ballet of the “Pomp of the great and ancient Menestrandise.”[43] Act I., the pompous entry of the Notables and sworn probationers. Act II., a bag-pipe song of the hurdy-gurdy-men and beggars. Act III., a joyous dance of the jugglers, clog-dancers, and Merry-Andrews with bears and monkeys. Act IV., a duet of the crazy and the lame. Act V., breaking up of the whole troop by the animals--furious étude in semiquavers.

Next, the cycle of the old and young men; the former sober, the latter happy.

But, before all, that original of Schumann’s Carnival, “Les Folies françaises ou les Dominos.” Maidenhood in invisible colours, Shame in rose, Impetuosity in red, Hope in green, Faithfulness in blue, Perseverance in gray, Longing in violet, Coquetry in a domino of many colours, the old gallants in purple and gold, the cuckolds in brown, silent Jealousy in dark gray, Rage and Desperation in black. Externally the form is that of a great ballet of the time; internally it is the variation of collected pieces on a single harmonic succession, its contents are the allusions easily comprehended at the time; the characterisation is carried through with great skill; but its musical setting is even shorter than is usually the case with Couperin’s clavier-pieces.

The Preludes, which Couperin appended to his “Art de Toucher le clavecin,” he named, in accordance with their _ad libitum_ performance, the Prose of clavier-literature. These dances and pictures were to him the poetry, rhymed and rhythmical. And it was precisely their formal completion which was of importance for the future of clavier-literature. We see the forms developing. In his best pieces the Sonata is already foreshadowed. The fulness of motives, as they occur to him in his two best compositions, the splendid “Favorite” and the stupendous “Passacaille,” is elsewhere thematically limited. In the recapitulation of the main theme at the beginning of the second part of the pieces, in the rhythmic similarity between the rondo-motive and its “couplets,” in many a thematic working-out, shown for example in “La Trophée” with its wonderfully modern sonata-style, lies the promise of thematically-developed music of succeeding generations. To the same purpose is his increasing sense for the association of several pieces. The many slow second pieces, or the popular dances such as the Polonaise, the Sezile, the Musette, which form the concluding parts of a group, the repetition of the first part after the second, the divisions into slow movement, slower, and lighter, which are specially visible in “La Triomphante,” and “Les Bacchanales”--all these are as much the germ of the future sonata arrangement, as the severer thematic was the germ of sonata-playing. The charm for us lies in observing, in the springtime of art, the natural uprising of these forms which appear to us almost laws of nature.

His “Art de toucher le clavecin,” the first school-book specially devoted to the clavier, was published in 1717 and dedicated to the king. This was a noteworthy advance. There was to be no longer a teaching of mere notation, but a teaching of technique and execution. “The method which I here propose,” says Couperin, “is unique, and has nothing to do with the tablature, which is only a counting of numbers. I deal here chiefly with all that belongs to good playing. I believe that my observations are clear enough to please connoisseurs and to help those who are willing to be helped. As there is a great difference between grammatical and rhetorical rules, so there is an infinite distance between tablature and the art of good playing.” Such a general musical “fabrication” and grammar, in spite of many advanced ideas, had been the work of St Lambert, which appeared from 1702 to 1707, and which in its first part (called “Principes du Clavecin”) devotes only a few lines to actual clavecin playing, and extends the second part (called “De l’accompagnement”) also to the organ, and other instruments. It is painful to him that his experience is treated lightly and turned into a “school.” The parents of the pupils, he says later, ought to place the most implicit reliance on the teacher, and yield him the completest powers. The teacher even takes the key of the instrument with him, and no playing should be attempted without his supervision. The scholar sits with his fore-arm horizontal before the clavier, elbows, hand and fingers in a line--the fingers thus lying quite flat on the keys. He has his body turned very slightly to the right, and the right foot a little stretched out. In order to prevent grimacing while playing, he often places a mirror in front in which he can watch his motions. A bar over the hands occasionally regulates the equality of their height; for the holding of the hands high makes the tone necessarily hard. Looking about of any kind is forbidden, and above all, coquetting with the public as if the playing were no trouble at all. And although, finally, everything in the performance depends on experience, taste, and feeling, yet rules are given for performance to which the player must conform. Couperin frequently disregards the fingering of his predecessors, and to the examples which he gives of his new art he adds confidently in a side-note that he is convinced that few persons in Paris have the old rules in their heads--Paris being the centre of all good. Step by step we have harder and harder studies developed from a single figure, and directions for finger exercises fill the rest of the volume. The change of fingers on one note, the avoidance of the same finger twice in scale passages, the first application of the thumb in passing under are his characteristic points. These are all symptoms of the endeavour to form a legato style suitable to the clavier; they are the external indications of the suppression of the lute. Couperin’s abhorrence of a vacuum runs through his whole teaching of the clavier. The adornments, the avoidance of too long note-values, the legato finger-exercise--all are the systematic development of the powers which arise from the necessity of _short_ tones in the clavier. He once introduces a charming short fugal _allemande_, in which both voice-parts work in contrary motion in most flowing style in order to show what “sounds well” on the clavier, and opposes to it the one-sided broken chords of the Italian sonatas of whose light style he has on other grounds the highest opinion. “The clavier has its peculiarities as the violin has _its_. If its note cannot swell, if the repetitions of one tone by striking do not suit it, it has advantages on the other side, precision, neatness, brilliancy, and width of compass.” Perhaps Couperin was the first who had an absolutely good ear for the clavier.

In comparison with him his elder and younger contemporaries must give place. Dumont, le Begue, D’Anglebert, Loeilly, Marchand, Dandrieu, and even the brilliant Rameau, composer of operas and founder of modern musical theory, are his inferiors. It is now demonstrated that Rameau published his first clavier-compositions in 1706, seven years before those of Couperin. But these pieces had just as little meaning and result as those of Marchand which appeared the year previously. They must have differed little from the style of the old school of Chambonnières. Rameau in later years is much freer and more developed, like Couperin, whose work he continued with the happiest results. He is no pioneer, but an improver of the ways. How powerful are his _allemandes_, how dainty his _gigues_, how brilliant the conduct of the thematic in his Cyclopes and his Trois Mains! What a depth of invention appears in his variations on Gavottes, in his Gigues, and in his splendid Niais de Sologne! How wonderfully melodious is his “L’Enharmonique,” what a realism is there in his “Hen” and in the “Call of the Birds”! How clear, how penetrating, how rich in promise is his technique! In him there are musical conceptions of extreme penetration and melodious harmonic turns which live for ever in the ear. From the “twenties” to the “sixties” all kinds of new editions of his works were produced, so popular were they, as they would still be, if the public knew these enchanting little works.

Thus the fame of the clavier is fixed in the Paris of the beginning of the eighteenth century, and its future assured. It is a kind of symbol of history that from the guild of violinists, founded by a king of violin-players, which reigned throughout the seventeenth century, should have proceeded, first the dance-masters, for reasons of independence, and then the organists and clavierists, who actually maintained that a musician was he only who played an instrument with full harmony. The orchestra went its own way, the “grande bande des violons” and the “petits violons” of Lully’s time having laid the foundation. The clavier was again the opponent of the orchestra, and concentrated the whole body of tone in its keys. An intimate, personal interpreter of musical emotions, it chooses to perform its functions in itself. Its consciousness of its own importance grows to a height. No longer will a clavecin-player when accompanist be the Cinderella among a company of proud sisters. “The clavierist,” cried Couperin indignantly, “is the last to be praised for his share in a concerto. What injustice! His accompaniment is the foundation of a building which supports the whole, and of which no one ever speaks!”

[33] Gaultier “the Elder” was a French lute-player,
who also published (in collaboration with his cousin
Pierre Gaultier) a collection of pieces for lute, with
instructions for playing. He flourished _temp._ Charles I.
References to him may be found _inter alia_, in Herrick,
who calls him Gotiere or Gotire.

[34] _Anglicé_, “for the sheer fun of howling.”

[35] M_a_nicordion = M_o_nocordion = a clavichord in which
_one_ string had still to provide several notes. See full
explanation elsewhere in this book.

[36] Agricola. Pupil of J. S. Bach.

[37] Galliard, in triple time, with a “leap” in every other
bar (second beat); Basse-dance also in triple time, but
“sans sauter,” all solemn sliding.

[38] For examples of these pieces, Wasielewski’s book on
sixteenth century instrumental music is invaluable. Also
see Arbeau’s “Orchésographie,” and my “Shakespeare and
Music.”

[39] This is yet a _third_ musician of the name, according
to Hawkins.

[40] Called a “knell” in England. See Shakespeare, Henry
viii., iv. ii. 77.

[41] _Prall_ means rebounding quickly, or springing back.
The Prall-triller consists of the main note, the note
_above_, and the main note again, and should be executed
_fast_.

[42] _Aubade_, English “morning music” or “hunts-up.”

[43] The “Pomp” is the “Masque,” as it would be called in
England. The “great and ancient Menestrandise” is the old
association or guild of Minstrels. The Charter of the King
of the Minstrels, granted by John of Gaunt, King of Castile
and Leon, and Duke of Lancaster, dated 1381, may be seen in
Hawkins’s History of Music. An old verse in “Robin Hood’s
Garland” alludes to the festive sports of the Minstrels in
these words, which almost reproduce the above description
of Couperin’s piece:--

“This battle was fought near Tutbury town
When the bag-pipers baited the bull,
I am king of the fiddlers, and swear ’tis a truth,
And call him that doubts it a gull;
For I saw them fighting, and fiddled the while,
And Clorinda sung Hey derry down:
The bumpkins are beaten, put up thy sword, Bob,
And now let’s dance into the town.
Before we came to it we heard a great shouting,
And all that were in it look’d madly;
For some were a’ bull-back, some dancing a morrice,
And some singing Arthur a Bradley.”

Old engraving after Wagniger’s design. The true musician is climbing up the Ladder of Contrapuntal Art ever higher and higher (see in the engraving the words _plus ultra_) to the Concert of Angels (legitime certantibus). From the “Basis and Fundamental Tone” the musical notes are being carried to the Gold-furnace (various flames in which are labelled, _e.g._ motet, canzonet, canon, etc.). The enemies are seen up above breaking the tritone, the false fifth, and the ninth; arrows are being shot at the Artist on the left as he writes (volenti nil difficile, “nothing is difficult to the willing mind”), but they are shattered on the Shield of Minerva, on which is represented the Austrian Eagle. ]

Scarlatti

Domenico Scarlatti, perhaps the greatest clavier-player that Italy ever had, prefaces a collection of thirty sonatas, which appeared at Amsterdam,[44] with the following words: “Amateur or professor, whoever thou art, seek not in these compositions for any deep feeling. They are only a frolic of art, intended to increase thy confidence on the clavier. I had no ambition to make a sensation; I was simply requested to publish the pieces. Should they be not utterly unpleasing to thee, I shall all the more willingly undertake other commissions, in order to rejoice thee in a lighter and more varied style. Take then these pieces rather as man than as critic; so only shalt thou increase thine own content. To speak of the use of the two hands--D denotes _dritta_, the right, and M _manca_, the left. Farewell!” It is noticeable how here in a few words the whole essence of Italian clavier-music is summed up--the fresh, cheerful disposition of the artist; the respect for the amateur; the pleasure in mere sound and in musical construction; the thorough working-out of intellectual motives (in the manner of the Étude); and the stress laid upon the equal participation of both hands as essential factors in the “concert,” [using this word in its older sense as expressing the association of two or more vocal or instrumental “parts”]. The word “concert” was well understood in these early days to mean the combination of two viols; and music of such a kind was, in form and in content, the true precursor of clavier-music, in which the right and left hand “parts” are strictly on an equality both in difficulty and importance.

These are the distinguishing marks of Italian clavier-art, and within these limits it works.

But Scarlatti is especially remarkable to us in the present day, in that he occupies the position of an early writer whose pieces still play a part, though a small one, in modern public concerts. Liszt, for example, was partial to him, and arranged his “Cat’s Fugue”; while Bülow edited a representative selection from his pieces. Czerny published (through Haslinger) two hundred of his so-called Sonatas--though, by the way, the last of these pieces belongs really to the father, Alessandro Scarlatti. Before that time the remains of the master had formed no inconsiderable part of private manuscript collections, such as those of the Abbé Santini in Rome, and others.[45]

Domenico Scarlatti, the famous son of the not less famous Alessandro, who was a composer of operas and chief of the Neapolitan School, exhibits in old portraits a serious, severe, even pedagogic countenance. There is also much of the pedagogue in his pieces; yet I think him fresher, gayer, more happy in life and mind than this face would lead one to suppose. His “Exercises” move with vigorous strides, and are far too full of esprit to be pedantic. His life was that of an artist universally honoured, and rejoicing in his fame, a type of which his contemporary Handel is the model; and his biography reveals no less activity than his works. A pupil of his renowned father, in the midst of the volatile, melody-loving, easily-stirred Neapolitan world, he set out early for Rome, in order to become the scholar of the great theorist Gasparini and of the organist and clavier-player Pasquini. In 1709, at the age of twenty-six, he made the acquaintance of Handel at Venice, and in sheer admiration, followed him to Rome. There he remained ten years, and became kapellmeister of St Peter’s, gaining a reputation by the works of his genius. In 1720 we suddenly find him in London as clavicymbalist of the Italian opera. Here his “Narcissus” was performed. A year later again he was in Lisbon, where the King of Portugal made efforts to detain him, and where for a time he gave lessons to the Princess. At this time the fame of his playing and of his compositions reached the farthest bounds of Europe, and he ranked thenceforward as the first executant of the age. He returned again to Italy, and from Italy to Spain. He remained in Madrid from 1729 to his death in 1757. Here all kinds of honours were showered upon him; he was Knight of St James, and chamber-player to the Queen, who still retained a grateful memory of the lessons he had given her at Lisbon when she was Princess of Asturias. To her he dedicated his first-published pieces, prefixing to them the lively preface above quoted.

Italian music has to French the relation which Bull has to Bird, or the virtuoso to the poet. In Scarlatti we seek in vain for any inner motive, nor do we feel any need of an emotional rendering on the part of the performer; his short pieces aim only at _sound_ effects, and are written merely from the love of brilliant clavier-passages, or to embody delicate technical devices. They are not denizens of Paradise, who wander, unconscious of their naked beauty, under over-arching bowers; they are athletes, simply rejoicing in their physical strength, and raising gymnastic to a high, self-sufficient art. We admire them, as we admire an acrobatic troupe of strong and stout character; we admire them--not too much, yet with a certain eager anticipation of the next interesting and unusual feat of skill. We wonder at their mastery of technique, and the systematic development of their characteristic methods; we rejoice that they never, in their desire to please, abandon the standpoint of the sober artists; but our heart remains cold. There is an icy, virgin purity in this first off-shoot[46] of absolute virtuosity, which kindles our sense for the art of beautiful mechanism, for the art of technique _per se_--an art which, after all, the historian of the clavier must not depreciate by comparing it with that of the _inner_ music.

The Scarlatti style is a genuine product of the Italian musical emotion. The Italian is not born for heavy, contrapuntal, “vain ticklings of the ears”; nor, on the other hand, for too intimate effusions or symbolic mysteries. He is sensuous through and through; delight in playing and in sound is the very life of his music, as delight in outline and in colour is the very life of his painting. The intoxication of absolute tone runs through the masses of his churches, the operas of his theatre, the chamber-music of his salons. Delight in sound gave the impulse to every Italian musician in his bid for fame. It created virtuosity, which loves playing for its own sake; it created the dramatic choruses, with which the Venetian school began its career; it created the melody predominating over the harmony, with the discovery of which in the Florentine opera the greatest blow was struck for the new principles of “secular” musicianship. From love of sound the Venetians cast the instruments free from their old corporate unity, and gave them an individual meaning and value. From love of sound Frescobaldi led the organ, Corelli the violin, Scarlatti the clavier, to undreamt-of technical creations. And the _bel canto_ of the human voice almost attained the capacity of an instrument; so small was the influence of the mere words. They were enamoured of melody, which, unlike the ecclesiastical counterpoint, sought its new objective not in the manifold transformation, but in the natural development of a motive: they were captivated with the “da capo” repetition of concerted pieces or arias, a habit grounded on the psychological law of the higher effectiveness of all repeated passages. They rioted in the multitude of forms, in which they found a place for every kind of music, for every “tempo,” every rhythm, and for all kinds of expression. Throughout all this was to be perceived the sensuous Italian love for music, which expressed in this manifoldness its freedom of artistic activity, and in that freedom the unity of thematic construction and consequently the unity of formal repetition.

Technical ability was appreciated in Venice earlier than elsewhere. The registers of organists at St Mark’s go back to 1318. In Venice not the office only, but the art, was honoured. The musician was not, as he was much later at Florence, interrupted by the ringing of a bell, if he continued his performance too long. The emancipation of artists, which in our own century we have seen carried out in the person of the orchestral conductor, was in Venice effected by the instrumental musician; and as to-day the orchestra has grown in repute by the agency of the conductor, so in those days the prestige of instrumental music advanced alongside that of the performer. At the beginning of the seventeenth century a Frescobaldi could already gain so important a position as player of the organ and clavier, that it was said that no clavier-player was respected who did not play after his new fashion. When he gave his first recital in St Peter’s, thirty thousand persons were there to hear him. What Frescobaldi was in the first half of the seventeenth century, that was Pasquini in the second half. In Italy, Austria, and France he was treated like a prince; and his tombstone bears the proud inscription, “Organist of the Senate and People of Rome.” With Scarlatti the art of clavier-playing reaches its height, and begins to decline. It is not clavierists but violinists, the wordless rivals of the singers, who have carried the type of Italian virtuosity into our own times--Corelli, Vivaldi, Locatelli, Tartini, Paganini.

This sensuous devotion to music apart from inner meaning, this passion for poetic beauty, the Italians have not yet, even under Wagnerian influences, wholly forgotten. The victorious rule of absolute tone, while it constituted their greatness, carried with it the germ of their decay. Virtuosity is the mark of their art and of their life. We must take them as they are, in the whole light-hearted temperament of their existence. This Bohemian type of the Italian musician of the time may profitably be compared with the similar French type. What a seductive brilliancy there is in the adventurous career of a Bononcini! His operas are received at Vienna with unparalleled enthusiasm. Queen Sophia Charlotte is the clavier-player at the production of his “Polifemo” in Berlin. In London he enters upon a contest with Handel, in which social intrigues are involved with high political aims. Next, he appears in a lawsuit, and is unmasked as a common plagiary[47] of a madrigal of Lotti’s; shortly after he is away to Paris with an alchemist, who swindles him of all his property, and leaves him to make his living by the sweat of his brow to his ninetieth year. Stradella’s fate is well known--how he ran away with the mistress of a Venetian before the first performance of his own opera;[48] was more than once attacked with a dagger, and finally actually murdered.[49] What, compared with this, is the story of Rameau’s youthful love and its punishment, and of his tardy attainment of the haven of fortune, or what the anecdotes of Marchand, with his love affairs, his expulsion from Paris, and his smiling return? The dangerous glitter of this Italian Bohemianism is the fitting framework of that sensuous, lively, irresponsible music.

It was inevitable that the Italians should invent the opera--the opera, in which every thing tends rapidly to the spectacular; singers, scene painters, musicians, and the public. Apart from its relation to opera all Italian music is unintelligible, and it is no accident that for centuries the Italians stood in the forefront of opera. Those lucky misunderstandings are well-known, which led, about the year 1600, to the rise of this form of art. A circle of Platonic dreamers (led by Giovanni Bardi, Count of Vernio) in Florence, anxious to revive the ancient tragedy, engaged certain musicians to compose monodic songs with accompaniment. They merely meant by this to be antique; but as a matter of fact they were unconsciously acting along the line of the most modern of needs, which had long tended towards isolated melody. The dainty and delicate songs, which took their origin in this, the Venetians, and afterwards the Neapolitans, accepted eagerly as a material on which to construct forms of ravishing virtuosity, until a Jomelli, with his dashing bravura passages on the most solemn words, finally arrives at that very “laceramento della poesia”[50] which the Florentine reformer Caccini had once fanatically combated as a madness of the ancient song in several parts. In a very short time the opera runs through the whole gamut of the joys and sorrows of virtuosity. The sweet charm of sound, exhibited by a voice which bears the melody, so suited to the narrow outlines of poetry, is found in the old vestal airs of Caccini and Peri. The delight in a multitude of forms, in an alternation of different rhythms in short portions of the aria, lived in the songs of the Venetian Cavalli, in which we are reminded of the alternating tempi of the old instrumental pieces[51]--the toccatas, fantasias, and canzoni. Yet empty vanity shows itself all too soon. The original simplicity was overlaid by various corrupt accretions, first by songs, introduced in loose dependence on the action, then by complete concerted pieces, which are indicated in the libretto--together with directions to tailors, architects, and decorators, and alongside of the titles and orders of the performers. In Naples, worse still, the music gradually declines into a stiff and wearisome form and sweet playful nothingness. The well-defined outline of the aria appears, now regularly written “da capo”; it alternates to a tiresome degree with the accompanied recitative; the chorus recedes into the background before the soloists. It is the old typical form, skilfully adapted to virtuosity, precisely as a sonata of Scarlatti is differentiated from a toccata of Frescobaldi or Pasquini. Originality is vanquished; elegance has created a set of formalities in which technique can freely exercise itself. The substantive style, so to speak, has given way to the adjective, and matter is conquered by form. This Neapolitan class of opera, which thus exalts the virtuoso, begins with Alessandro Scarlatti. He is the father of that species of art which is afterwards included in the name of Italian opera, in which we see a contempt for the words, a love of vocal bravura, the supremacy of the aria, and a delight in the human voice as an instrument. In the forms of his ornamentations we discover again in antitype the passages of Domenico; in his love of the _da capo_ and instrumental repetitions of vocal phrases we see once more in antitype Domenico’s repetitions of shorter or longer groups of bars. In the “Alessandro nelle Indie” of the Neapolitan Leonardo Vinci the hero sings arias full of slurred “divisions,” syncopations, unprepared sevenths, which to a man acquainted with Scarlatti’s sonatas appear to bear a strong family resemblance to Scarlatti. Old rubbish bears germs of new creations; released from the heavy burden of the words, the light play of the voices in the clavier-pieces introduces a fresh, youthful life that is full of promise for the future.

The isolation of the voice and of the instrument, the sensuous delight in sound, demands a chamber-music and a chamber-style. Chamber-music demands the Maecenas of the great house, and the wealthy amateur, who is so powerful a factor in every advance of art. Roman musical life, for instance, draws its strength from the practical encouragement of the Pope’s, or from the concerts and operas performed in aristocratic houses. A Venetian nobleman, Benedetto Marcello, became a distinguished and favourite composer, a poet and a satirist. A Roman nobleman, Emilio dei Cavalieri, became the founder of the modern oratorio, an opera-composer of the advanced school, perhaps even the very earliest composer of vocal monody. Vincenzo Galilei, the father of the astronomer, became known by his monodies in that circle of Florentine Platonists, to whose worthy amateurism is due the origin of the opera; and he wrote a work on the technique and fingering of all instruments.

Music in the home is in Italy not too intimate, but proud, splendid, mere pastime. Like the opera of the virtuosos, like the secularised church-music, it tends to rely upon effect, and lives on applause. It depends chiefly on the performer, and knows little of the mutual intelligence of souls. A subtle aristocratic love of music runs through the Italy of the Middle Ages. Many are the names of high-born men and women who had mastered the art of the lute by ear--for a notation was as yet unknown.[52] In the Decameron (1350), alongside of the novel-telling, it is song, lute-playing, viol-playing, dance and choral refrain, with which that pleasant company loves most to kill the time.

The music of dances, songs, and instrumental pieces, which was soon to find its proper home in the clavier, is a child of the world, and, in the view of a serious theoretician like Pietro Bembo, it is exposed to all the dangers of emptiness and vanity. In 1529 he writes to his daughter Helena, who like many of the women in her position, intended to receive instruction on the clavier in her convent: “As to your request to be allowed to learn the monochord,[53] I answer that you cannot yet, on account of your youth, understand that playing is only suited for idle and volatile ladies; whereas I desired you to be the most pure and loveable maiden in the world. Also, it would bring you but little pleasure or renown if you should play badly; while to play well you would have to devote ten or twelve years to practice, without being able to think of anything else. Consider a moment whether _this_ would become you. And if your friends wish you to learn to play in order to give them pleasure, reply that you do not wish to make yourself ridiculous in their eyes; and content yourself with the sciences and domestic occupations.”

A hundred years later chamber-music is at its zenith. The great Carissimi (d. 1674) put the flourishing chamber cantata[54]--that half-dramatic, half-lyric song of the seventeenth century--by the side of the monodic church-songs of Viadana; and Steffani added his renowned chamber-duets. The case was precisely similar with instrumental music; by the side of the “sonata da chiesa,” with its free and independent style, came the “sonata da camera,” as a suite of favourite dance forms;[55] and the “concerti,” with their several instruments playing to a small accompanying orchestra. Above all, the possibility is now realised of suitably accompanying monodies and concerted works on the clavier, from the figured bass; and this in its turn contributes not a little to the victorious advance of the melodic song. But as a solo-instrument, the clavier suns itself in the light of the chamber-style, in which brilliancy, dexterity of hand, and elasticity of form are not less admired than the many small and spirited caprices, which in the “grand” style of music have perhaps not yet been attempted.

Among all the instruments of tone which achieve an independent existence in Italy, the clavier naturally takes its stand last. From its first movement towards this independence, in Venice in the sixteenth century, to the full liberty of a Scarlatti, stretches an interval of a hundred and fifty years. It was in fact partly too much occupied in the orchestra, and partly too dependent on the technique of the organ. We find it already in the orchestra in the first operas of Peri; under Monteverde, the first of all great orchestral geniuses, there were two claviers, on the right and left of the stage. They serve to accompany solo singing, or, along with small organs, to fill up the harmony of the orchestral body. As a rule the operatic composer writes only the figured bass, but occasionally adds some of the melodic voice-parts; the conductor completes the score, leaving to the several players, however, a certain freedom of improvisation in colouring, a freedom which a well-trained musician would not abuse to the detriment of the _tout ensemble_.

But clavier-pieces pure and simple had a characteristically _dependent_ existence. Even in that Venetian circle where Willaert (1490-1563) Gabrieli,[56] and Merulo moved, in which instruments were first emancipated, in which they were boldly introduced into church-music, and solo-pieces were written for orchestral or for keyed instruments, even here the soul of the clavier lay still fettered. It is the organ that indicates colour and takes the lead. In the pieces of the two Gabrielis, or of Merulo, the old contrapuntal, pictorial fashion lives still almost untouched by external disturbances; and the picture seldom allows us to anticipate that stiff adherence to the theme, and that well-wrought harmony which, in the England of the same age, we found so full of promise. Down to the time of Frescobaldi, organist at St Peter’s in 1615, who stands as a landmark in this development, the Italian sense for absolute music is far too strong for an “applied” music to be able, as it did in France and England, to _modernise_ the instrumental pieces by their necessary dependence on song and dance. Canzoni[57] are treated in a light fugal style; the so-called Ricercari[58] represent another and freer fugal form; the toccatas, capriccios and fantasias are variegated attempts to unite all tempi and all kinds of playing in one piece. The composers are aiming at typical forms, and only attain an unrestrained formlessness which all these pieces with their trifling differences alike exhibit. The juxtaposition of chords, successions of canonic imitations, free alternations of tempo, piquant applications of the newly-discovered chromatic possibilities--all these interest these writers much more than character or expression. All these ricercari, canzoni, fantasias, toccatas, are alike “sonatas”--pieces which exist for the sake of their _tones_ and technique, and, as Couperin says, not in the least for the sake of their soul or content. Dance-suites and variations on songs, which as time went on gained in popularity, sharpened, here as elsewhere, the sense for form; but these never became the predominant class. The free form of the fantasia always ranked as the principal species of the higher clavier-pieces. In Frescobaldi we already see the process of crystallisation. His canzoni and fugues not only exhibit for the first time the good fugal style familiar to us, but also betray the modern sense for arrangement and method in their frequent division[59] into three movements, and in their progressive quickening of tempo. He it is also who reduces under a distinct law of arrangement the various movements of the whole instrumental fantasia.

With Pasquini in the second half of the seventeenth century, we meet the visible line of demarcation between organ and clavier. Hitherto the organ had been in everything the predominant partner. The whole aspect of the clavier-pieces was that of the organ. The old Venetians had frequently written for it in three or four parts and brought the instrument into popularity. But even Frescobaldi had written no piece for clavier alone. Diruta, organist at Chioggia, the pupil of Merulo, wrote a dialogue between 1597 and 1609 on the best method of playing organ and clavier, and had of course drawn attention to the characteristic features of clavier-playing; but all his observations on holding the hands horizontal,[60] on the good and bad fingers (the second and fourth are the “good,” and fall on the strong accents of the bar), or on the ornamentations and their execution, are in the first instance written with reference to the organ. Indeed, he actually begins his book with a panegyric on that instrument. As a matter of fact the true emancipator of the Italian clavier was Pasquini. He wrote for the clavicymbal alone; in his figures and style of play he thus early showed a genuine sense for the clavier; he abandoned the practice of setting chord passages and runs in close juxtaposition, but elaborated out of the two the proper clavier style; he brought into strong connection with a theme the quicker and slower parts of his sonatas, and set them clearly over against each other; and he attempts, as in his Capriccio on the motive of the cuckoo’s song, to draw from the clavier all kinds of characteristic effects, still wild and confused, but full of the freshness of spring.

So far is the early Italian clavier (when the violin begins its victorious career) from assuming a leading position, that the cembalo can do nothing better than make use of the experiences of the violin. For we must give up the legend of the genius of Michel Angelo Rossi. This story is one of the most amusing freaks of musical history. We find in many popular collections of old music an andante and allegro in G major by this man, who is tolerably well known as an operatic composer and violinist. He was a pupil of Frescobaldi and died in 1660. This piece is so captivating in its melody, so decided in its form, so restrained in its arrangement, that it would have done honour to Mozart. Had these pieces truly sprung from the _intavolatura_ of Michel Angelo Rossi, the modernity of their form and melody would give such a shock to musical history that it would be shivered into fragments. Yet a man like Pauer, who published them, could actually believe that this music was possible before 1660.[61] A later historian, Rolland, in his “Histoire de l’Opéra avant Lully et Scarlatti,” led astray by the same mistake, fancies he detects in the choruses of Rossi’s opera of Hermione anticipations of the Zauberflöte.[62] Parry alone, the author of the brilliant article on the sonata in Grove’s Dictionary of Music, has boggled at this pseudo Rossi. Heaven knows to whom the pretty little pieces really belong. It is not unlikely that Scarlatti wrote them in his old age.

Italian cembalo, from a monastery, of the 18th century. Made of cypress wood. The pictures on the lid represent a concert of monks and a landscape. On the sides of the case are Cupids and garlands. De Wit collection, Leipsic. ]

The thematically precise sonatas and concertos of Corelli, the old violin master; the pieces of Vivaldi, so wonderfully rich in melody; the intellectual suites of Locatelli; it is in these violin works that the form of the Italian instrumental piece first appears, deriving itself from the joint experiences of the free toccata and of the fettered dance. Corelli, who died so early as 1713, was one of those strange phenomena in the history of art, which reach the utmost heights of an epoch, without freezing into an icy classicism. His pieces are even to-day of a ravishing sensuousness, and must be produced in the flowery dress of an improvised _coloratura_.[63] They mark the highest point in the monodic style of the virginal Italian music. From the point of view of melody they are the freshest dances and arias written about 1700, full of unparalleled invention and of a rhythmical freedom which anticipates the scherzi of Beethoven. They are indeed the works of a genius in form. But they never stiffen into one shape, like the operatic overtures.[64] In Corelli the sonata still stands in the full bloom of its manifold forms. Among his numerous pieces there are not many which exhibit precisely the same arrangement of the movements and of their tempi, or of the various dances. Even the number of these movements varies, so that one can lay down no precise rule. Slow movements begin, or stand in the middle, or come at the end; or even, with a modernised reminiscence of old times, introduce themselves for a few bars[65] between the allegros and the vivaces. This is, from the point of view of form, the same rhythmic freedom which Beethoven, on deeper material grounds, reintroduced in his latest sonatas and quartets. All is held together by an ornamental, delicate, and thematic filigree-work. More rarely, as in the fourth Sonata da chiesa and in the fifth Sonata da camera, a certain thematic relation between the several movements is to be detected; but within the movement the thematic conception is so worked out that it is treated with natural modulations and appropriate intermediate passages. The movement falls into two parts which are repeated as a matter of course; the second part begins with the modulated main motive of the first. Occasionally, as in the allemande of the tenth concerto and in the allegro of the twelfth, we find an exact return to the first theme. This combination of the da capo system with the modulation of the theme; and in the midst of this the miniature da capo system of the concerted violins imitating each other; and especially the favourite concluding repetitions of bars, alternating from forte to piano,--all these became the groundwork of the Scarlattian style.