ilifornia 
 ional 
 
 ility
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 
 < 
 
 .
 
 LESSONS 
 
 IN 
 
 MUSICAL HISTORY 
 
 JOHN COMFORT FILLMCRE. 
 
 AUTHOR OF "HISTORY OF PIANO MUSIC." " NEV LESSONS IN HARMON?,* 
 
 ETC. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA : 
 
 THEODORE PRESSER 
 1708 CHESTNUT STREET.
 
 ENTERKP ACCORDING TO ACT OF CONGRESS IN THE YEAR l888 IN THE 
 
 OFFICE OF THE LIBRARIAN OF CONGRESS AT 
 
 WASHINGTON. D. C.
 
 Mnsfc 
 Library 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THIS little book is the result of the author's own efforts to interest 
 his pupils in the History of Music and to give them an outline 
 of that history, presenting its salient facts in a clearer per- 
 spective than he could find in any text-book he had tried 
 to use. Since the book was begun, the excellent history of 
 Dr. Langhans has appeared in English, but the translation 
 is so clumsy as not to preclude the necessity of some other text-book 
 for English-speaking students. There still remains the need of an 
 exhaustive history to follow such an outline as is here attempted. Those 
 who read German can find it in the admirable histories of Von Dommer 
 and Ambros; but the counterparts of these works are not yet to be 
 found in English. Chappell's history, so far as it has gone, is interesting, 
 and instructive to discriminating readers; but its author seems too 
 opinionated and too unbalanced to be thoroughly trusted as a guide. 
 Rowbotham is valuable to those who can devote attention to such 
 details as the minute study of Greek rhythms and other fine points of 
 ancient music, and will be interesting even to those who can read it but 
 superficially. But the second of his two large volumes already pub- 
 lished only brings us through the music of the Greek tragedy. The 
 histories of Burney and Hawkins are not to be forgotten, but they are, 
 of course, antiquated. Macfarren's, Kilter's, Bouavia Hunt's, Eockstro's 
 and others are outlines only. 
 
 The most important auxiliary to the English speaking student of 
 musical history is Grove's " Dictionary of Music and Musicians," by far 
 the most complete encyclopedia yet published in English, a library in 
 itself. It ought to be accessible to every student of music. There is a 
 short "Dictionary of Music and Musicians" appended to W. S. B. 
 Mathews' "How to Understand Music," which will be found very 
 handy for reference. The book itself is valuable reading, and a second 
 volume, now in preparation, will cover important ground in the history 
 of music. Naumann's History is valuable for its illustrations. Many 
 of these are also to be found in Mendel's ".Conversations-lexicon," the 
 most extensive musical encyclopedia for those who read German. A 
 smaller, but most valuable German encyclopedia is Dr. Hugo Kiemann's 
 " Musikalisches Conversations-Lexikon." Among special histories 
 
 Hi 
 
 1860929
 
 Riemann's ' Studien zur Geschichte der Notenschrift," is perhaps the 
 most important contribution to our knowledge made in recent years. 
 It ought to be translated into clear and readable English. Dr. Riemann 
 is doubtless the greatest living musical theorist and no student of music 
 can afford to ignore his works. Unfortunately none of them have been 
 translated except his lecture on " The Nature of Harmony " and his 
 " Comparative Piano School." 
 
 In biography we are better off. The series entitled " The Great 
 Musicians," edited by Franz Hueffer is strongly to be recommended. 
 Its American publishers are Scribner and Welt'ord, New York. Kara- 
 sowski's " Life of Chopin" is now to be had in English. This is the 
 stand ird biography of Chopin. Liszt's " Chopin " is interesting but is, 
 in some respects, inaccurate and misleading. Schumann's Essays are 
 well-known and so is Wasielwski's " Life of Schumann." It is matter 
 of pride to Americans that the standard life of Beethoven is the 
 production of an American, A. W. Thayer. Unfortunately, it has thus 
 far appeared only in German. The works connected with Mendelssohn's 
 name are numerous and valuable ; his letters are especially charming. 
 "Music and Morals" and " My Musical Memories," by the Kev. H. R. 
 Harvies, are excellent reading. But I will not further extend a list 
 which could hardly be made exhaustive. The student who makes his 
 own choice of the books here enumerated will know how to discriminate 
 as to his further reading. 
 
 Milwaukee, Wis., November 1887. J. C, F.
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 IN the logical order of thought, the considera- 
 tion of the nature of music naturally precedes the 
 investigation of its function. But its function 
 was undoubtedly perceived ages before there was 
 any thought of investigating its nature on scien- 
 tific principles. We shall not go astray, then, 
 perhaps, if we first try to imagine to ourselves 
 what the first music in the world must have been 
 and why people practiced it. If we can get at 
 the real motive which impelled people to make 
 music we shall surely become enlightened as to 
 its real function in the economy of human nature. 
 The insight we thus gain will serve as a sure 
 guide through all the mazes of musical history. 
 
 We may assume as certain that the first ele- 
 mentary efforts at music were vocal, and not 
 instrumental. For the human voice was certainly 
 in existence before any other musical instruments 
 were invented. People sang before they had 
 instruments to play on. Mothers crooned to their 
 babes, rocking them backward and forward in 
 their arms as they hushed them to sleep. Men 
 shouted defiance to their enemies in inarticulate 
 cries and yells. Young men and maidens danced, 
 and sung to their dancing. We may be sure of 
 these things, because they are to be found among 
 the most primitive and savage peoples of our own 
 time, and because we have authentic accounts of 
 them among ancient primitive peoples. Human 
 nature is essentially the same in all ages and under 
 vii 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 The nature and 
 function of 
 music. 
 
 The earliest 
 music not 
 instrumental, 
 but vocal.
 
 via 
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The function 
 of music is to 
 express and 
 excite feeling. 
 
 The nature of 
 music. 
 
 Primitive music 
 made up of 
 melody and 
 rhythm. 
 
 all conditions, and we cannot doubt that the 
 impulse which leads to such manifestations now 
 led our remotest ancestors to express their feelings 
 in similar ways. 
 
 This phrase "express their feelings " suggests 
 at least one of the motives which impelled people 
 to sing. The savage yells at his enemy because 
 his yelling is the natural expression of his emo- 
 tional excitement. The mother croons to her babe 
 because she feels like doing so. It is the natural 
 expression of her emotional state. But this is not 
 all. She does so because of its effect on the child. 
 She knows intuitively that this monotonous, meas- 
 ured flow of sound, the expression of her own 
 quiet happiness, will soothe the infant into a rest- 
 ful state of feeling and dispose it to slumber. The 
 warrior feels that the expression of his rage by 
 means of violent sounds will excite his comrades 
 to valor and perhaps strike terror into his ene- 
 mies. The singing of the dancers is equally expres- 
 sive of their emotional state, and tends to excite 
 those feelings to still greater activity. Vocal 
 music, then, is a natural product of human nature, 
 and its function is to express and excite feeling. 
 
 In the primitive music above referred to we 
 find two of the essential elements of all music 
 Melody and Rhythm. Melody is a succession of 
 single musical sounds, differing more or less in 
 pitch. Ehythm is a succession of beats or pulsa- 
 tions occurring at regular intervals. There is a 
 natural tendency in human nature to make all 
 melody rhythmic. The mother's low song to her 
 babe naturally falls into regularly recurring 
 rhythmic divisions, accompanied by corresponding 
 movements of the body. Khythm is of the very 
 essence of the dance; and the rhythmic motions 
 of the dancers are accompanied with rhythmic
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 IX 
 
 song, the clapping of hands and the stamping of 
 feet. The element of rhythm becomes most 
 strongly marked iu war dances. In these the 
 motions are violent, the songs loud and harsh 
 and the rhythm often marked by the striking of 
 war clubs on hollow logs or on some resounding 
 instrument of percussion. 
 
 Instruments of percussion were, doubtless, the 
 first to be invented. From marking the rhythm 
 by pounding on a tree or post with a club, it 
 was not far to covering the end of a hollow log 
 with a stretched skin, thus producing a rude 
 drum. Progress was then easy toward the whole 
 family of drums, tom-toms, gongs, cymbals, 
 tambourines, etc., the latter kind as soon as metals 
 and metal working had been discovered. Wind 
 instruments were probably invented by some such 
 accident as hearing a broken reed give forth a 
 musical tone when blown across by the wind. 
 The Egyptian and Greek myth has it that the god 
 Hermes, walking by the Nile bank, picked up a 
 tortoise shell which had some sun-dried membranes 
 stretched across it, and that this gave him the idea 
 of the lyre. It is not improbable that some such 
 accident as this really occasioned the invention of 
 stringed instruments. Or perhaps the idea came 
 from a tightly-stretched bowstring. However 
 this may be, the first instrumental music must 
 have been associated with vocal music, and must 
 have been essentially the same in its nature and 
 function. That is, it consisted of rhythmical 
 successions of sounds, which owed their origin to 
 the innate impulse to express, convey and excite 
 feeling. 
 
 As time went on and the savage developed into 
 the barbarian, and from the barbarian into the 
 civilized man, there was, we know, a gradual 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The beyiiiniiujs 
 of instrumental 
 tntuic. _ 
 
 Sensuous 
 of tone.
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 iNTRODtTCTIOV. 
 
 The i 
 
 Unity. 
 
 growth in refinement. This improvement showed 
 'tself in musical perception as well as elsewhere. 
 The power of discriminating qualities of tone, like 
 other faculties, grows with use and attention, and 
 sensuous beauty of tone gradually came to be 
 regarded as a refined sensuous pleasure in itself. 
 It was enjoyed apart from its emotional signifi- 
 cance, just as the perfume of a rose is. So we find 
 it now. There are persons who lay undue stress 
 on the element of sensuous beauty in music, 
 disregarding other and higher considerations. To 
 such, music becomes a sensuous indulgence 
 refined, indeed, but still involving a minimum of 
 intellectual and moral quality. 
 
 In the course of time the awakened human in- 
 tellect began to deal with music as with other sub- 
 jects in which men were interested. Philosophers 
 began to investigate the physical and mathematical 
 relations of tones, and thus arose the science of 
 ACOUSTICS. Composers began to analyze rhythms 
 and to balance groups of small rhythmical units 
 against each other to make symmetrically larger 
 units, and thus began the science and art of 
 MELODIC FORM. They also began to combine 
 two and afterward more melodies sounding at 
 the same time into one whole, and thus arose 
 COUNTERPOINT.* 
 
 They learned to secure Unity in these composi- 
 tions by using the same melody as a second voice- 
 part, only beginning it some time after the first. Thus 
 arose Strict and afterward Free IMITATION. From 
 this principle were developed, in the strict style, 
 CANON and FUGUE. From the free treatment of 
 
 * " Counterpoint" means "point against point." The 
 term was first used before our modern notes were in- 
 vented, when points were used to indicate tones.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 XI 
 
 imitations were developed all the modern forms. 
 This unity of idea, secured by developing a com- 
 position through varied repetitions of a few melodic 
 ideas (Themes or Motives), is called THEMATIC 
 TREATMENT. 
 
 Once the idea of combining melodies had been 
 developed, the step was inevitable to thinking 
 sounds in combinations, or Chords. It took a long 
 time before men learned to think complex music 
 otherwise than as combinations of simultaneously 
 progressing melodies. They thought it horizontally, 
 so to speak. But after a time they learned to 
 think it perpendicularly. That is, they learned to 
 think of each combination of simultaneously sound- 
 ing tones (chord) as a musical unit ; and they 
 gradually found out the laws governing the 
 natural relations of succession chords. The science 
 of chords and of their successions and relations is 
 called HARMONY. 
 
 Finally, men developed the art of combining 
 and contrasting the different qualities of tones 
 produced by different kinds of instruments so as to 
 produce beautiful effects, and to heighten and 
 intensify emotional expression. This is the art of 
 INSTRUMENTATION, or ORCHESTRATION. All these 
 belong to the intellectual element in music. Logi- 
 cally and historically, they come after the emo- 
 tional and sensuous enjoyment of music. 
 
 The imagination is the great constructive 
 faculty. In the beginning of music it had only 
 the simplest elements of melody and rhythm as 
 material with which to deal. But it dealt with 
 these in their relation to feeling, and the folk-songs 
 of all nations are the sincere, spontaneous expression 
 of natural feeling. Gradually, as the sensuous 
 perception and the intellectual elements in music 
 were developed, the food for the imagination 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Harmony. 
 
 Instrumenta- 
 tion. 
 
 The 
 
 imnijiii'ition.
 
 Xll 
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Summary. 
 
 lielatine rant 
 of compoiert 
 and their works. 
 
 became richer and more varied, until we have 
 now a wealth of musical material sufficient to tax 
 the imaginative power of a Beethoven or a 
 Wagner. 
 
 To sum up, then, music is, in its nature, that 
 one of the Fine Arts which has for its material 
 musical tones. It affords us enjoyment on its 
 lowest plane through the discrimination of refined 
 from coarse tones and by combinations and con- 
 trasts of different qualities of tone. The pleasure 
 thus derived is refined, but it is sensuous merely. 
 Music adds to this very high intellectual enjoy- 
 ment. In its more elaborate forms, such as the 
 fugue, the sonata, the symphony, the music-drama, 
 it taxes the intellectual resources of both composer 
 and student in equal degree with the greatest 
 intellectual productions of the human mind in 
 other fields of activity. It thus adds intellectual 
 to sensuous enjoyment, and so ranks high in the 
 scale of mental activities. 
 
 But its primary and ultimate function is to 
 express, convey and excite feeling. To this the 
 sensuous and intellectual elements are subordinate. 
 The imagination reaches its highest flights and 
 performs its most legitimate function when it 
 deals with its musical materials in their relation 
 to emotion. 
 
 The rank of a composer, like that of any other 
 creative artist, depends, first of all, on the vigor, 
 vividness and fertility of his imagination. Crea- 
 tive power means the gift of spontaneous invention. 
 It can neither be learned nor taught ; it is an 
 original gift which can neither be acquired nor 
 accounted for. This is it which is commonly called 
 Genius. Nothing else can take the place of it. 
 Wherever it appears, as it does here and there 
 i among men, and often under the most unexpected
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 xm 
 
 and apparently unpromising conditions, the world 
 does not willingly let it die. Men may be slow in 
 recognizing it ; but once acknowledged, it becomes 
 a precious and immortal possession for the whole 
 race. Next to this in importance comes what is 
 commonly called Talent. This means a special 
 aptitude for artistic perception and attainment, 
 and for applying acquired ideas, without much 
 original power of invention. In its higher mani- 
 festations talent so closely approximates the lower 
 orders of genius that it is often not easy to distin- 
 guish them, and there are many cases that have 
 occasioned dispute among critics. 
 
 But whether a composer be possessed of genius 
 or only of talent, it is absolutely essential that he 
 should have his mind amply stored with musical 
 material, and should have mastered music from 
 the intellectual side. He must, first of all, have 
 material for his imagination to deal with, must 
 acquire musical experience. Accordingly, we find 
 that all the great masters of composition have 
 diligently studied the works of their predecessors 
 and have missed no opportunities to hear the best 
 music. They have studied them also from the 
 intellectual and technical side ; have become mas- 
 ters of the technic of composition. They have 
 realized that no matter what ideas a composer 
 may have, he can only become an artist by acquir- 
 ing the power to express them. This they have 
 done by infinite painstaking, and so much have 
 they been impressed with the necessity of this, 
 that the greatest of them have repeatedly said, in 
 one form or other, that genius is only the art of 
 taking pains! 
 
 But this is not enough. Given an original, 
 creative mind, with acute musical perceptions, 
 ample intellectual and technical attainments and 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Nf4 of it \dy. 
 
 Tlie moral 
 element.
 
 XIV 
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 JVincipte* of 
 orUicitm. 
 
 a clear comprehension of the relation of music to 
 feeling, it still remains for him to decide what 
 kind of emotion he will choose to embody in music. 
 He may choose noble or ignoble subjects ; he may, 
 if he chooses, treat noble subjects in an ignoble 
 way. This has often been done by composers of 
 music for religious worship and for the drama. 
 Nor can he escape moral choices even in purely 
 instrumental music. He may make his music as 
 high in aim as the Beethoven fifth symphony, or 
 as unheroic, not to say frivolous and base, as an 
 Offenbach waltz. This will depend on his own 
 moral character. Base men cannot write great 
 music, nor heroic men ignoble music ; though 
 even weak men may have their heroic moments, 
 and noble men their weak ones. But, other 
 things being equal, the rank of a composer will 
 depend on the nobility of his feeling and of his 
 moral purpose. The relative rank of his works 
 will depend on the degree in which they embody 
 the noblest and best that is in him. 
 
 The principles above set forth are those which 
 will determine the judgments of composers and 
 their works which are to follow in this book. It 
 will seek to trace the development of the different 
 factors in musical production *and in musical 
 enjoyment at different times and in different 
 nations. It will seek to show how and why the 
 course of musical history became what it was. 
 This the author regards as of even more import- 
 ance than an authentic record of historical facts.
 
 INTRODUCTION'. 
 
 xv 
 
 QUESTIONS. 
 
 How do we seek to gain an insight into the nature of 
 music? 
 
 What natural impulses of human nature produced 
 primitive music? Give illustrations. 
 
 What are the primitive elements of music? 
 
 Give the probable origin of primitive instruments. 
 
 How did men come to a more discriminating percep- 
 tion of the difference in quality of tone? 
 
 Give an account of the intellectual element in music. 
 
 How many kinds of enjoyment are derivable from 
 music? 
 
 On what does the rank of a composer depend? 
 
 Why do even gifted composers need study and experi- 
 ence? 
 
 What relation has music to the moral nature of man ? 
 
 INTRODUCTION.
 
 L Chinese Instruments. The " ChS " or Wonderful." a 25-stringed 
 instrument, and the "Po-son," a small drum. 
 
 . The earliest Egyptian Harp. 
 (XVI)
 
 III. Greek Instruments, (a) Plectrum, (b) Kithara, (c) Psaltery or 
 long lyre, (d) Chelys, a small lyre. 
 
 IV. Oreek Instruments, (a) and (c), Varieties of the Lyre. 
 (b) Trigonon. 
 
 (XVII)
 
 LESSON I. 
 
 ORIENTAL AND ANCIENT MUSIC. 
 
 Music, as we know it, in its developed form 
 as a fine art, belongs to the Christian Era, and 
 practically, to the last four centuries. It is the 
 latest born of the family of fine arts 4 and is 
 that one of them which specially corresponds 
 to the needs of emotional expression as devel- 
 oped by Christianity. 
 
 Nevertheless, music in its more elementary 
 forms, and even in a considerable degree of 
 development, as regards melody, has existed for 
 thousands of years, among nations and races 
 the most various and diverse. Harmony, coun- 
 ter-point, form and instrumentation, as we know 
 them, are modern ami occidental. But the most 
 ancient of Oriental civilizations, in China, in 
 India, in Persia, in Egypt and especially in 
 Greece, used and prized melody, established 
 scales, investigated acoustics, and had, possi- 
 bly, more knowledge of harmony and of instru- 
 mental combinations than we have yet been 
 able to discover. (See illustration I. ) 
 
 In all ancient nations music was believed to 
 be of divine origin and in that stage of mental 
 development when mythologies invariably arise 
 there was always a mythology connected with 
 the art of music. In India the gift of music 
 was ascribed to BRAHMA. To his son, NAKED, 
 was ascribed the invention of theFtna, an in- 
 strument of the guitar type. In Egypt the 
 invention of the lyre was ascribed to the god 
 TIIAUT, who, walking one day by the Nile, took 
 up a tortoise shell to which some dried mem- 
 branes still adhered, accidentally set them in 
 
 Music a recent 
 art. 
 
 Melody older 
 than harmony 
 
 This chapter 
 preceding 
 
 ancient 
 mythology 
 
 concerning
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 Miraculous 
 
 t^owers 
 
 attributed to 
 
 music. 
 
 Music 
 "vgarded as 
 elevating. 
 
 ibration and thus produced musical tones. In 
 Greece a similar legend attached to HERMES. 
 Other similar examples might be cited from 
 China and elsewhere. (See illustrations II, III 
 and IV.) 
 
 Miraculous powers were attributed to music 
 and musicians. Some of the ancient sacred 
 songs in India produced rain ; some produced 
 darkness. Others no mortal might sing under 
 penalty of destruction by fire from heaven. 
 Others when sung forced men, animals and in- 
 animate objects to obey the will of the singer. 
 In Greece, ORPHEUS and AMPHION were followed 
 by trees and by wild animals which lost their 
 ferocity when they heard their songs. In Judea, 
 the walls of Jericho fell at the sound of the 
 priests' trumpets. These legends serve to show 
 how great was the impression produced on the 
 minds, feelings and imaginations of the ancients 
 by such music as they had. 
 
 In all the pre-Christian civilizations music 
 was regarded as an elevating exercise of the 
 feelings, intellect and imagination, and an im- 
 portant element of culture. Theorists occupied 
 themselves with the science of music, with the 
 determination of intervals, the construction of 
 scales and the building of melodies. Curiously 
 similar results, as regards scales, were arrived 
 at by nations widely remote from each other in 
 distance, blood, language, religion and customs. 
 The Chinese and the Indians seem to have had 
 the same pentatonic (five-toned) scale which is 
 still to be found in the ancient music of the 
 Celtic nations, such as the Irish and Scotch. It 
 is simpty our major diatonic scale with the 
 fourth and seventh omitted. These intervals 
 were supplied later, and this scale, which we 
 call " natural," was found equally satisfactory
 
 ORIENTAL AND ANCIENT MUSIC. 
 
 by Oriental barbarians whose ideas and feelings 
 are incomprehensible to us. But the musical 
 results they otained from it, especially in China, 
 are such as do not in the least appeal to our 
 musical sympathies. In fact they often outrage 
 our musical susceptibilities, as our music does 
 theirs. Some of the ancient nations also had a 
 five-toned under-scale afterwards developed into 
 an eight-toned one. This last was the reciprocal 
 of the major or over-scale, having the same 
 order of tones and semi-tones going down that 
 the over-scale has going up. Examples : 
 
 Five-toned over-scale 
 
 Five-toned under-scale: 
 
 In both these pentatonic scales the fourth 
 and seventh, i. e., the intervals which give the 
 semitones or " leading-note " progressions are 
 left out and were afterwards supplied. 
 
 All these ancient nations had stringed instru- 
 ments, wind instruments of wood and of metal 
 and instruments of percussion. In China, the 
 latter class predominates. To India we proba- 
 bly owe the invention of stringed instruments 
 played with a bow. Egypt and Greece made 
 common use of stringed instruments plucked 
 with the fingers or with a plectrum, such as the 
 lyre and the harp, the precursors of our modern 
 harpsichord and piano-forte. 
 
 The splendid intellectual civilization of the 
 Greeks included an elaborate musical system. 
 The beginnings of Greek musical theory were 
 probably derived from Egypt, but of the Egyp- 
 tian theory of music we know nothing and of 
 its practice very little. Of the Greek system 
 
 Over-scale 
 
 and 
 Under-scate, 
 
 Different 
 families of 
 Instrument*. 
 
 The Greek 
 musical 
 system.
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 The 
 xtraoJiord. 
 
 we are now able to give a tolerably complete 
 account. The latest researches have profoundly 
 modified, not to say revolutionized the ideas of 
 it which have been current in Christendom since 
 the first attempts to revive the Greek scales as 
 a basis for Christian melody about the end of 
 the fifth century of our era. Those attempts 
 resulted in a serious misapprehension of the 
 facts of Greek theory and practice, and the 
 blunders of the early Christian theorists resulted 
 finally in the adoption and perpetuation in our 
 system of a so called "minor" scale vastly in- 
 ferior in naturalness and in rationality to the 
 Greek scale from which it was perverted. As 
 a consequence, our present minor scale is a 
 clumsy and confused substitute for what might 
 have been as clear and satisfactory a scale as our 
 present " major " one. On this account Greek 
 musical theory has a special interest for us. 
 
 In brief, the Greek musical s}*stem had for 
 its fundamental unit the tetrachord, or series of 
 four tones. The three intervals separating these 
 four tones consisted invariably of two tones and 
 one semitone. The tetrachord was named ac- 
 cording to the position of the semitone. When 
 the semitone came between the first tone and 
 the second (going downward), the tetrachord 
 was called Lydian. When it was between the 
 second and the third, it was called Phrygian. 
 When it was between the third and fourth, it 
 was called Dorian. There were three different 
 octave-species," modes "or scales, as we should 
 call them, corresponding to these, made by con- 
 joining two tetrachords of the same kind sepa- 
 rated by a tone. They seem to have been all 
 written and thought downward, not upward, as 
 we think our scales. Expressed in modern 
 notation they would be as follows :
 
 ORIENTIAL AND ANCIENT MUSIC. 
 
 
 T 
 
 LlMHl. 
 
 ^fte " modes" 
 "octave- 
 species" 
 or scales. 
 
 o_ ! >] 1 l 
 
 1^11 
 
 1. Lydian Scale: ["^ & .& w 
 
 
 I 
 
 1 ^- \f fJ ^a 
 
 J 
 
 Ki 
 
 d. 
 
 1st tetrachord. 2d tetrachoi 
 
 
 ipJ i] 
 
 - 3 i 
 
 
 ^ 1st tetrachord. 2d tetrachord. 
 
 1 1 1 \ 
 
 1 1 1 i 
 
 
 3. Dorian Snale : f"A. ^ ^ i^r 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 a 
 
 LCB ' ' / ^ 
 
 1st tetrachord. 2d tetrachord. 
 
 The Lydian corresponds to our modern msijor 
 scale thought downward. The Dorian is the 
 exact reciprocal in under intervals of our major 
 scale in over intervals, the semitones coming 
 between the third and fourth and seventh and 
 eighth, giving each tetrachord a descending 
 leading-note, as each tetrachord of our major 
 scale has an ascending leading-note. The Dorian 
 scale was the favorite one of the Greeks, owing, 
 doubtless, to this peculiarity ; for the semitone 
 between the seventh and eighth, seems to be a 
 natural demand of the human ear and mind. The 
 Lydian scale they did not like so well, probably 
 because they thought it downward and not up- 
 ward, thus missing the peculiarly satisfactory 
 characteristic of the upward leading-tone. 
 
 When, after the lapse of about four centuries, 
 there began to be felt a desire to base the music 
 of the Christian church on scientific principles 
 and to cultivate music in a scientific way, the 
 natural recourse was to the Greek system, for 
 that was the only culture-music yet developed 
 in the world. But the Greek civilization had 
 ' then perished, Greek scholarship was unknown 
 
 Greek scales 
 
 thought down 
 
 ward. 
 
 Attempts to 
 base ClirixtidK 
 music on that 
 of the (Sreeks.
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 The error 
 
 which 
 
 produced our 
 "minor" scale. 
 
 The 
 14 complete 
 
 syttnn" 
 f# the Greeks. 
 
 in Christendom, and the attempt to revive the 
 Greek scales resulted in a complete misappre- 
 hension of the way the Greeks thought their 
 music. Bishop Ambrose, of Milan, did indeed 
 get hold of the Greek scales, but he inverted 
 them, thought them upicard instead of down- 
 ward, and his mistake was perpetuated in 
 Christian music. The error was serviceable in 
 that it gave us the real natural way of thinking 
 the major scale, which finally became the pre- 
 dominant scale of European music. But it did 
 harm in that it inverted the natural order of 
 the Dorian scale and prevented any true per- 
 ception of its real character. That scale, begun 
 on its fifth (A) and thought upicard, thus, 
 
 m 
 
 eventually became our present so-called "minor" 
 scale. Thought as the Greeks thought it, there 
 is no propriety whatever in calling it a "minor" 
 scale ; it is an tm^er-scale, the true reciprocal 
 of the oyer-scale,which we, with equal infelicity, 
 call "major." The revival of the under-scale 
 with its characteristic melodic and harmonic 
 possibilities is greatly to be desired as an en- 
 richment of our musical resources. 
 
 In later times the Greeks had what they called 
 a " complete musical system ; " a scale of two 
 octaves, made up of five Dorian tetrachords not 
 separated by a tone as they were in the octave- 
 species, but overlapping and with a final added 
 tone, thus : 
 
 The Greek "Complete Musical System." 
 1st tetrachord. 3d tetrachord. 5th tetrachord. 
 
 : =-=^77f =* - 1= ? 
 
 2d tetrachord. 1th tetrachord. 
 
 Added 
 final 
 note.
 
 ORIENTAL AND ANCIENT MUSIC. 
 
 The final A seems to have been added merel} 
 to complete the two octaves. Finally, this 
 "complete system" was*transposed, without 
 change of the order of intervals, to each of the 
 twelve semitones of the octave, making twelve 
 different " modes, "or, as we should say, "keys." 
 Each of these modes had a special name. Of 
 these, five, namely, those beginning on D, Dt, 
 E, F and F *, were regarded as principal and the 
 others as subordinate. Each principal mode 
 had two subordinate ones, one beginning on the 
 fourth below and. one beginning on the fourth 
 above. Those beginning on the under-fourtR 
 were designated by the term " hypo" which 
 means "under" and those beginning on the 
 fourth above were designated by the term 
 "hyper," which means "over, "thus: 
 
 Scheme of the Greek Modes. 
 
 A, Hypo-Dorian. D, Dorian. G, Hyper-Dorian. 
 A#, Hypo-Ionian. D#, Ionian. 
 
 B, Hypo-Phrygian. E, 
 
 C, Hypo-Aeolian. F, 
 
 C#, Hypo-Lydian. F#, Lydian, 
 
 Observe that some of these are duplicates. 
 Observe, also, that whereas the Dorian "Octave- 
 species " began on E, the " complete system " 
 which began on E was called Phrygian. These 
 names were confused by the mediaeval theorists, 
 who applied to the scale E-F-G-A-B-C-D-E 
 the name " Phrygian Mode." So that they com- 
 mitted at least two blunders ; they thought this 
 under-scale, the Greek " Dorian octave-species " 
 upward instead of downward, as the Greeks 
 thought it, and they applied to it the name 
 which the Greeks gave only to their " complete 
 system " beginning on the same tone. They 
 blundered similarly with reference to all the 
 other scales they adopted from the Greeks, so 
 
 G#, Hyper-Ionian. 
 Phrygian. A, Hyper-Phrygian. 
 Aeolian. Bb, Hyper-Aeolian. 
 
 B, Hyper-Lydian. 
 
 Its 
 
 transpositions. 
 
 Confusion of 
 
 medtteval 
 nomenclatw e.
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 that Greek musical theory, instead of being an 
 enlightening element in our modern music, as 
 it might have been* became a misleading and 
 confusing one. The effects of this early and 
 long continued misunderstanding of Greek 
 musical ideas have been for centuries firmly 
 embedded in our musical system and are now 
 easily recognizable in our confused treatment 
 of the " minor " scale. It will probably be a 
 good while before we learn to treat the " minor " 
 scale and the " minor " chord in a rational way. 
 For a lucid presentation of this subject see 
 " The Nature of Harmony," by Dr. Hugo Rie- 
 mann, translated by the present writer and 
 published by the publisher of this history. 
 
 QUESTIONS. 
 
 What did the ancients do in music ? 
 
 What did they not do, so far as we know ? 
 
 What origin did they assign to music? 
 
 What effects were attributed to it in their mythologies ? 
 
 Give examples. 
 
 What two five-toned scales were used by the ancient 
 Chinese and East Indians? 
 
 What modern races have had one or both of these scales? 
 
 Into what two eight-toned scales were these afterwards 
 developed ? 
 
 What kind of instruments did the ancients use? 
 
 W T hence did the Greeks probably get their music? 
 
 Give a brief account of the Greek theory of music. 
 
 What lay at the basis of their system? 
 
 Describe the difference between their "octave-species" 
 and their " complete system." 
 
 Which "octave- species" or scale was their favorite? 
 
 How did this scale become our modern "minor" scale? 
 
 What effect did the misapprehension of Greek ideas 
 produce on Christian music? 
 
 In what respects did the early Christian and mediaeval 
 theorists misunderstand the Greek musical theory which 
 they sought to revive ?
 
 LESSON II. 
 
 THE FIRST TEN CENTURIES OF CHRISTIAN MUSIC. 
 
 THE history of music practically begins with 
 the Christian era. There had been music, of one 
 sort or another, from a very early period, and 
 some nations, as the Greeks, for example, had a 
 very elaborate theoretical and practical musical 
 system. But what was really valuable in their 
 system was not made available in modern music. 
 
 With the advent of the Christian era, music 
 had to begin anew, almost from the foundation. 
 The beginnings of Christianity were surrounded 
 by Greek influences. Begun and propagated by 
 Hebrews, it soon spread among the Greek popu- 
 lations which enclosed Judea on all sides, and 
 Greek churches were speedily organized. Before 
 the death of the immediate disciples and followers 
 of Jesus, numerous Greek congregations called 
 themselves by his name, professed his doctrines, 
 worshiped on the first day of the week, broke 
 iread and drank wine in remembrance of him, 
 and sang hymns in divine service. Thus began 
 a new era which was to supplant the ancient civili- 
 zation and the ancient worship. The central 
 element in the new faith and worship, as com- 
 pared with the paganism of the Greeks, was a 
 pure mo/ality. Some of the Greek religious rites, 
 in the ceremonial part of which vocal and instru- 
 mental music played a prominent part, were 
 shockingly immoral. The worship of Bacchus 
 and of Aphrodite (Venus) consisted principally 
 in unbridled sensual indulgence. To these licen- 
 tious orgies, universal among pagan Greeks, all 
 9 
 
 LESSON II 
 
 Beginning 
 anew. 
 
 Necessity 
 of it.
 
 10 
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HIS TOE Y. 
 
 LESSON II. 
 
 the resources of musical art and science as then 
 known contributed their fascination and power 
 of emotional excitement. Bands of frenzied and 
 half-intoxicated revelers danced and paraded to 
 the sound of flutes and other instruments, and 
 sang Bacchanalian and erotic songs. It was no 
 wonder that, considering the associations inevitably 
 connected with the popular music of the time, the 
 Christian teachers and elders should have pro- 
 claimed that " no pure Christian maiden ought 
 even to know the sound of a flute." Those who 
 celebrated the pagan worship were as far as possi- 
 ble from purity; and this class included nearly 
 or quite the whole Greek population ; so that 
 Christian worship, accepting the ideals of its 
 founder, seeking purity and holiness, not only 
 in act, but in word and thought, had to break 
 finally and completely with heathen ideas, prac- 
 tices and associations. For the time, the music of 
 the Christian churches must be wholly dissociated 
 from all music to which the Greek proselyte had 
 been accustomed, unless, indeed, as may have 
 been the case, they perhaps retained some of the 
 more dignified and reverential strains used in the 
 worshipof Apollo and of Diana. Clement of Alex- 
 andria, almost two hundred years after Christ, 
 even forbade his congregation to use the chromatic- 
 mode in their singing during the church service, 
 and there seems to have been for a long time a 
 constant struggle to eradicate pagan feelings, and 
 the music with which they had been associated. 
 
 Of the real character of Christian music, and 
 of its progress for centuries, we know very little. 
 That the disciples of Jesus were accustomed to 
 sing hymns in their own religious meetings, we 
 gather from such casual remarks as that of the 
 evangelist in his account of the Last Supper,
 
 THE FIRST TEN CENTURIES. 
 
 11 
 
 " And they sang a hymn and went out." Doubt- 
 less the melodies and hymns they had used in 
 worship from childhood continued to be used in 
 the new church services, and it seems likely that 
 the apostles who first preached the Gospel to the 
 Gentiles introduced the same familiar music into 
 the worshiping assemblies of their Greek prose- 
 lytes. There is every reason to believe that this 
 music was purely monophonic ; that is, it consisted 
 of a single melody or voice-part, without any 
 accompaniment, either of harmony or of instru- 
 ments. 
 
 It lay in the conditions of the time that progress 
 in music should be slow. Little or no attention 
 could be given to it, or to the cultivation of any art 
 or science, except that of Theology. The church 
 had to suffer persecution. The zeal of its preach- 
 ers found ample room for its full expression in 
 making converts, in establishing churches, in con- 
 firming the faithful, who were often called on to 
 endure martyrdom, in answering the numerous 
 doctrinal questions which the acute Greek intellect 
 inevitably raised, in defining clearly to their own 
 minds their own theological belief. The first 
 centuries of the church were full of theological 
 disputes, concerning the nature and relations of 
 God, of Christ, and of the Holy Spirit. These 
 disputes were in the highest degree acrimonious. 
 Parties were formed, headed by leaders of oppos- 
 ing views ; and party spirit led not only to virulent 
 abuse and blows, but to massacres in the streets 
 and even in the sacred precincts of the churches. 
 The professed followers of the meek and lowly 
 Jesus warred with one another for differences of 
 opinion on the most recondite and incomprehen- 
 sible points of metaphysical speculation. No 
 wonder that they could give no time or thought 
 
 LESSON II. 
 
 Why progrett 
 was slow.
 
 12 
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 LESSOX II. 
 
 Pope Sylvester, 
 314 A.D., 
 establishes 
 staging schools. 
 
 to the development and improvement of church 
 music. 
 
 But as church services went on, and church 
 organization and ritual grew more elaborate, it 
 was inevitable that, sooner or later, the time 
 must come when imperfect music would cease 
 
 Probable solution? 
 
 s 
 
 -&-G>- 
 
 .cflB-lo-rnmlatt -'da-te 
 FIGURE 1. 
 
 to be tolerated, and when attention would be 
 given, not only to improvement in singing, but 
 to the increase of musical intelligence. In the 
 early part of the fourth century, Pope Sylvester 
 started singing schools, the first of which we have 
 any record in the Christian era. By that time 
 certain musical formulae had become pretty well
 
 THE FIRST TEN CENTURIES. 
 
 13 
 
 established, as appropriate to the different feasts LMSOJ) n - 
 and fasts of the church, and these singing schools 
 had for their main object the preservation of these 
 established chants. They had to be taught by 
 <ote and handed down by tradition, for the musi- 
 ;al notation of the time was extremely inadequate. 
 There were no means whatever for indicating the 
 length of tones, and the staff, our present means of 
 representing pitch, was not invented until almost 
 seven hundred years afterward. The only means 
 of indicating musical tones for singers were the 
 so-called " Neurase," of which Figs. 1, 2 and 4 are 
 illustrations. They were probably developed out of 
 the Greek accents and were written over the words 
 of the hymns. These singing schools were the first 
 sign of growth in the musical life of the church. 
 One effect of them was a strong tendency to con- 
 fine the singing in the church to those who had been 
 trained in them and to discourage congregational 
 singing. The latter was actually forbidden by the 
 Council of Laodicea, held 367 A. D. This coun- 
 cil ordained that nobody should sing in church 
 except the choir singers appointed for that pur- 
 pose and assembled in their own particular place. 
 All this was, of course, in the direction of making 
 music a matter of culture. 
 
 So far as theory is concerned, the first recorded 
 evidences of progress in the Church is the selection 
 of four of the Greek octave-modes by Bishop Am- 
 brose, of Milan, and the exclusion of music based Milan, died 
 on any of the others. 
 
 These were the four, beginning on D, E, F and 
 G, thus : 
 
 Notation of the 
 period. 
 
 Neurate. 
 
 Congregational, 
 ringing 
 
 forbidden 367 
 A.D. 
 
 Bithop 
 Ambrose, of 
 
 &-2q
 
 14 
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 LESSON II. 
 
 Authentic 
 moiles. 
 
 Plagnl modes. 
 
 m 
 
 These were afterwards called the authentic modes. 
 These modes, or scales, were regarded as having 
 their lowest note as a tonic or point of repose. 
 
 Gregory the Great, who was Pope from 590 to 
 604, added to these four modes four others, run- 
 ning from the fourth below the tonic of the au- 
 thentic mode to the fifth above it. Each plagal 
 mode had the same tonic or point of repose as the 
 authentic mode from which it was derived. The 
 following scheme will make this clear : 
 
 1st Gregorian tone, authenic, tonic D. 
 
 2d Gregorian tone, plagal, tonic D. 
 
 1. 
 
 3d Gregorian tone, authentic, tonic E. 
 4th Gregorian tone, plagal, tonic E. 
 
 3. 
 
 4. 
 
 
 i 
 
 5th Gregorian tone, authentic, tonic F. 
 6th Gregorian tone, plagal, tonic F. 
 
 5. 
 
 6. 
 
 m
 
 THE FIRST TEN CENTURIES. 
 
 15 
 
 7th Gregorian tone, authentic, tonic G. 
 8th Gregorian tone, plagal, tonic G. 
 
 It will be seen that the 8th tone differs from the 
 1st only in having a different tonic. These oc- 
 tave modes still serve as basis for some of the 
 music of the Roman Catholic Church. 
 
 Pope Gregory made some use of a letter notation, 
 but the neumse continued to be used four hundred 
 years longer. The Gregorian music became the 
 standard church music. It was fostered by Char- 
 lemagne, who caused it to be taught all over his 
 dominions. 
 
 For almost nine hundred years the Church owed 
 such musical progress as was made to southern 
 nations. The Italians, especially, cultivated sing- 
 ing with success, and taught it north of the Alps, 
 much less successfully, if we may trust contempo- 
 rary accounts. But with Hucbald, a monk of 
 the monastery of St. Amand, in northern France, 
 came the first faint dawn of a new epoch, that of 
 polyphonic music. In this field the Teutonic race 
 was to take the lead and keep it for about six 
 hundred years. Hucbald began to experiment 
 with intervals, trying what would go well together. 
 He got no further than making his voices move in 
 consonant intervals, parallel fourths, fifths and 
 octaves, and barbarous enough these combinations 
 sound to modern ears. But his work, never- 
 theless, stands as one of the mile-stones of musical 
 progress. It pointed out a new direction for 
 musical activity and marked the beginning of a 
 new era. 
 
 LESSON II. 
 
 Polyphony 
 begins. 
 
 Hucbald dieo 
 930.
 
 16 
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 But the time was not yet ripe for polyphony. 
 The first thing to be done was to improve the no- 
 tation so as to have some means of fixing absolute 
 pitch. Hucbald tried his hand at this. He used 
 various devices and finally hit on something ap- 
 proximating our present staff. But he utilized 
 only the spaces, not the lines. In his most improved 
 notation each space stood for a degree of the scale, 
 and he wrote each successive syllable in the space 
 which corresponded to the pitch in which it ought 
 to be sung. 
 
 T 
 
 T 
 
 T Ec\ 
 
 ta 
 
 ce\ / 
 
 lsra\ / 
 
 JLL 
 
 'be 
 
 etc. 
 
 vere/ 
 
 Solution. 
 
 eto. 
 
 - re 3* - ra - e - li - ta 
 FIGURE 3. 
 
 About a hundred years after his time, this 
 problem was practically solved by Guido, a monk 
 of Arezzo. He invented a staff of four lines, and 
 used both lines and spaces to represent absolute 
 pitch, just as we do. Guido also improved the 
 method of teaching then in vogue, and impressed 
 himself so strongly on his time that many things 
 were ascribed to him long afterwards which really 
 ought to be credited to other men men whose 
 very names have been lost. 
 
 In looking back over the ground we have passed, 
 what strikes us most forcibly is the extreme slow- 
 ness of progress.
 
 THE FIRST TEN CENTURIES. 
 
 17 
 
 It took a thousand years to get to a point where 
 there was a notation fit to express pitch relations 
 with accuracy. This slowness of progress and 
 the fewness of landmarks doubtless grew out of 
 the unfavorable conditions of the time. It was 
 the time of the dark ages, and included that por- 
 tion of those ages when ignorance and barbarism 
 most prevailed. Imagine a time when nobody 
 
 FIGUEE 4. 
 
 but the clergy could read or write ; when printing 
 did not exist ; when the roads were bad and un- 
 safe ; when neither life nor property was respected ; 
 when war and violence were the rule and peace the 
 rare exception. We can thus see, dimly at least, 
 how music, which of all the arts owes least, noth- 
 ing, in fact, to visible models, an art in which 
 everything had to be invented, would lag behind 
 all other intellectual interests. 
 
 LESSON II
 
 18 
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 LESSON II 
 
 QUESTIONS. 
 
 What kind of music did the early Christians have in 
 their worship ? 
 
 Why did not the Greek Christians use Greek music ? 
 
 How long was it before there-was any attempt at cul- 
 tivating church music? 
 
 What was the nature of these first attempts ? 
 
 By whose direction were they made ? 
 
 What was their effect on congregational singing? 
 
 Who established the authentic scales, and when? 
 
 Who established the plagal scales, and when? 
 
 Describe the authentic and plagal scales (or modes). 
 
 How long were these scales prevalent? 
 
 What can you say of the progress of music for 300 
 years after Gregory the Great ? 
 
 Who made the first recorded attempts at polyphonic 
 writing, and when? 
 
 Describe these attempts. 
 
 Who invented the staff? 
 
 What was notation previous to that!
 
 LESSON III. 
 
 FROM GUIDO OP AREZZO TO THE BEGINNING OF 
 
 THE SUPREMACY OF THE NETHERLANDERS, 
 
 ABOUT 1000 TO 1400. 
 
 THE dates which mark the boundaries of this 
 period are only approximate, and are given in 
 round numbers for the sake of convenience. Many 
 of the dates of this and the succeeding epoch are 
 more or less uncertain, different historians giving 
 them differently. Guide's most important work 
 was done during the first half of the eleventh cen- 
 tury. He is said to have died in 1050. As we 
 have seen, his most valuable service to musical 
 progress was the invention of the staff, a means of 
 representing to the eye the pitch relations of tones 
 so perfect, that it remains in use to this day in 
 substantially the form given it by Guido, and there 
 is little or no reason to suppose that it will ever 
 be supplanted. 
 
 But there was still no way of indicating the 
 length of tones, and until this lack was supplied, 
 the germs of polyphonic writing, already in exist- 
 ence for a full century, could not possibly spring 
 into vigorous life. 
 
 For this great desideratum music had to wait 
 another two hundred years. The man who in- 
 vented notes by which to represent the length of 
 tones to the eye was Franco, of Cologne. At first 
 he had only two kinds of notes, a long one (Longa 
 P) and a short one (Brevis ), the latter half as 
 long as the former. The two combined made triple 
 time, and he used both the form ^ (Trochee) 
 and - - ( Iambus). Double time was not used 
 19 
 
 LESSON III 
 
 Nolet indicating 
 length. 
 
 Franco^ of 
 Cnlngne, about 
 1200.
 
 20 
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 LESSON III. 
 
 Defects of 
 
 Franco'* 
 
 notation. 
 
 until a later period, and was then considered less 
 perfect than triple time. Franco afterward added 
 a note twice as long as the Longa, the Maxima 
 
 ( I) , and one half as long as a Brevis, the Semi- 
 brevis (*). He also used rests corresponding 
 to their lengths, and thus mensural music be- 
 came possible. 
 
 The worst of it was that Franco unfortunately 
 did not give his long and short notes a constant 
 and uniform value, as we might naturally suppose 
 he would have done. He made the lengths of his 
 notes depend partly on their position in relation 
 to each other. Thus a Longa alone counted as a 
 whole measure of triple time; but if a Brevis 
 followed it, the two together only filled a measure ; 
 if two Breves followed it, then the Longa counted 
 as a measure (triple time) and the two Breves as 
 another measure, the second Brevis being twice as 
 long as the first. Thus, for example, the follow- 
 ing passage F- P- would read thus in 
 modern notation : 
 
 All this confusion could be obviated only by 
 separating the measures by bars or by some similar 
 device, and by giving each note a fixed and definite 
 length under all circumstances. But this was not 
 done for a long time after Franco. 
 
 Such as it was, however, this notation of Franco's 
 was so long a step in advance that it gave a great 
 impulse to musical development. Now that the 
 time relations of two voice-parts could be accu- 
 rately measured, even though the means were 
 clumsy, composers began zealously to write " Dis- 
 cant," as it was called, that is, to compose a second
 
 GUI DO TO FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 21 
 
 of Padua; 
 
 j ean de M 
 
 voice to accompany the Gregorian Chant. The LESSON in. 
 latter was called the " cantus firmus," or " fixed 
 voice." 
 
 The two most remarkable names among the 
 composers who cultivated and improved the new 
 mensural music were Marchettus, of Padua, near about 130 - 
 the end of the thirteenth century, and Jean de 
 Muris, a Doctor of Theology in the University of 
 Paris, in the early part of the fourteenth century. 
 In the writings of these two theorists occur for the 
 first time the prohibition against parallel fifths 
 and octaves, which has been an accepted doctrine 
 of musical theory ever since. The Parisian Doctor 
 was the first writer to use the word " Counter- 
 point," instead of " Discant," a word derived from 
 " punctum contra punctum," point against point, 
 or, as we should say, note against note. 
 
 Philip of Vitry is also a name of nearly as great 
 importance as these two. These men, and many 
 others, diligently practiced the infant art of poly- 
 phonic writing, and prepared the way for the 
 Netherland composers of the next epoch. But 
 all or most of their activity was in the domain of 
 church music. We must now consider the secular 
 music of the same epoch. 
 
 The strongest impulse toward the production of 
 secular music during this epoch came from the 
 Crusades. From the end of the eleventh till the 
 end of the thirteenth century the imagination of 
 Christendom was fired with fanatical enthusiasm 
 for the recovery of the holy sepulchre from the 
 hands of the infidel. Fighting was the main busi- 
 ness of men. Scientific investigation there was 
 none. Europe was in the dark ages; men's im- 
 pulses were easily turned into the channels of 
 fanaticism ; salvation was preached as the holy 
 
 Influence of 
 the Orneades, 
 about 1100 In 
 1300.
 
 22 
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 LESSON III. 
 
 The 
 Trotibadourt. 
 
 task of driving of infidel Saracens from Palestine. 
 The result was that for two hundred years swarms 
 of men, of all ranks of society, from all Christian 
 countries, poured into Asia Minor, and there came 
 into violent collision with a race more highly de- 
 veloped and a civilization more advanced than 
 their own. Their ideas were as much jostled by 
 this encounter as were their bodies ; the mental 
 shock was as great as the physical. Thousands 
 who returned brought home with them new ideas, 
 new and strange objects, and among them new 
 musical instruments. The lute and the guitar 
 had hitherto been unknown in Europe. The Sar- 
 acens used also kettle-drums and other drums in 
 war, and these were new to the Christian soldiers. 
 The introduction of these instruments into Euro- 
 pean music modified it very greatly, and, of course, 
 stimulated interest in secular music, since they 
 were not adapted for the purposes of divine wor- 
 ship. The Arab songs, too, must have had their 
 effect on the Crusaders. Then the conditions were 
 not only stimulating to curiosity and to the secular 
 imagination, but they must have had a strong effect 
 on the emotional life. Absence from home and 
 friends, home-sickness, disease, wounds, hardships 
 of all sorts, strange surroundings, all these tended 
 to excite and to deepen the social feelings. And 
 these feelings soon found expression in a vast 
 quantity of secular music, in a style hitherto un- 
 known in Christendom. With the rise of chivalry 
 came also the music of chivalry, love-songs ac- 
 companied by the lute. 
 
 The most favorable soil for the development of 
 this sentimental style of secular music was south- 
 ern France, especially Provence. Here the " gay 
 science," as it was called, found its natural home, 
 under sunny skies and among a lively, pleasure-
 
 GUIDO TO FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 23 
 
 loving people. It was cultivated by the highest 
 nobility, such as Count William, of Poitiers (1087- 
 1127) and KingThibaut, of Navarre (1201-1254). 
 These noblemen, however, only invented their 
 songs, and hence were called Troubadours or 
 Trouveres (inventors). The songs were sung and 
 accompanied by assistants called Minstrels (from 
 the same Latin root as our " Minister," a servant 
 or helper). These minstrels were always of a 
 lower social rank than the Troubadours. They 
 were not only dependents of great houses, but were 
 ranked with clowns and tumblers, being kept, like 
 them, for the amusement of their noble patrons. 
 This is proved by the name " Jongleurs," applied 
 to them (from the Latin " Joculator," joker), and 
 by at least one old picture, in which a man stand- 
 ing on his hands is represented among the players. 
 
 Toward the end of the thirteenth century, we 
 find an exceptional Troubadour, who not only in- 
 vented songs, but sang and played them himself. 
 This was Adam de la Hale, a composer thoroughly 
 familiar with the best musical knowledge of his 
 time and one of the first writers of four-part songs. 
 He also wrote a little operetta called " Kobin and 
 Marion," the earliest specimen of comic opera 
 known. 
 
 Although Provence was the natural home of the 
 love-song as developed by the Troubadours, they 
 were not the only ones affected by the influences 
 which called it into existence. In Germany the 
 same tendencies showed themselves about the same 
 time, and their manifestation differed from those 
 of Provence only as determined by the differences 
 of climate and of race characteristics. The Ger- 
 man knights and noblemen, however, took pride 
 in singing and playing their own songs instead of 
 leaving the interpretation of them to dependents. 
 
 LESSON III. 
 
 Adam de to 
 
 The 
 
 Uliimeitingen.
 
 24 
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 LESSON HI. 
 
 Tfte 
 Ueislersinger. 
 
 They differed from the Troubadours also iu that 
 they regarded the music as subordinate to the 
 words. They treated the poem as primary and 
 the music as serving the purpose of intensifying 
 the sentiment of it ; whereas the Troubadours 
 made the music primary aud the words secondary. 
 The two styles, therefore, often differed greatly. 
 The Troubadours, as the Italian opera composers 
 did later, laid prime stress on the invention of 
 tuneful melodies, whether they exactly fitted, the 
 words or not. The Minnesingers made it their first 
 aim to interpret the feeling of the text, whether 
 their melodies were sensuously beautiful or not, 
 often using a recitative style. These two opposite 
 tendencies have distinguished the Northern from 
 the Southern nations ever since. 
 
 The Minnesingers played their own very simple 
 accompaniments, often on small harps of triangular 
 shape. They were not always noblemen. A few 
 names have come down to us, such as Wolfram 
 von Eschenbach, Walther von der Vogelweide and 
 others who were engaged in the " Ssengerkrieg (con- 
 test of singers) at the Wartburg," in 1207. Wag- 
 ner has immortalized them in his " Tannhauser." 
 Besides the secular music thus cultivated by the 
 nobility, there was a very strong movement of a 
 similar sort among the mechanics and tradesmen 
 of the German cities. The impulse to this move- 
 ment seems to have come from the Minnesingers. 
 The breasts of the worthy German burghers were 
 fired with the same enthusiasm and guided by the 
 same principles as those which inspired their high- 
 bred compatriots. They formed a guild called 
 " Die Meistersinger" (The Master Singers) for the 
 purpose of cultivating music and poetry. They 
 were not merely interpreters of other men's pro- 
 ductions, but were themselves creators of both
 
 GUIDO TO FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 25 
 
 words and music. They had different degrees of 
 merit in the order, passing from each degree to the 
 next higher by competitive examination. Their 
 productions are said to have been rather common- 
 place and of no lasting value ; but the love of art, 
 such as it was, had such vitality among them that 
 their organization lived from the thirteenth cen- 
 tury into the nineteenth. The last society of the 
 guild was dissolved in 1839. It is no small matter 
 that so much enthusiasm for ideal aims should have 
 burned so long in the minds of men whose lives 
 were necessarily devoted, for the most part, to ma- 
 terial interests. It shows the German middle-class 
 character of that dark time in an admirable light. 
 
 The most noted of the Meistersingers was Ham 
 Sachs, 1495-1576. 
 
 Beside the consciously intentional efforts at good 
 music-making above enumerated, there was going 
 on at the same time a form of spontaneous musical 
 production of no small importance. This was the 
 " Volkslied," Folk-song, or popular song, of which 
 there are numerous examples in Germany and 
 elsewhere. These songs sprung up among the 
 common people, no one song, perhaps, being pro- 
 duced entirely by any one man. They were re- 
 peated by one and another as they were heard. A 
 beautiful strain invented by one might be repeated 
 by another, who would add another to it ; and so 
 they were passed on and handed down from gen- 
 eration to generation. Of course, only strains 
 which pleased many were able to live in this way, 
 and so all folk-songs, of whatever nation, have for 
 their prime characteristic, naive, spontaneous 
 beauty. They are products, not of calculation or 
 scientific intelligence, but of the original creative 
 power of men, the sense of beauty being the de- 
 termining factor. 
 
 LESSON III. 
 
 The Folk-song
 
 26 
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 LESSON III. 
 
 QUESTIONS. 
 
 After Guido had invented the staff, what new improve- 
 ment in notation was most needed? 
 
 Who made it ? 
 
 Describe the notes he used. . 
 
 Explain the remaining deficiencies of Franco's nota- 
 tion. 
 
 How were they finally obviated ? 
 
 Define "Discant," "Cantus Firmus." 
 
 Name three other great musicians of the 13th and 
 14th centuries. 
 
 Who first used the term Counterpoint? 
 
 What rules were permanently fixed by these men? 
 
 When were the Crusades? 
 
 How did they affect the minds and feelings of those 
 who took part in them? 
 
 How did these mental and emotional changes affect 
 musical development in Europe? 
 
 What instruments did the Crusaders get from the 
 Saracens? 
 
 What do you know of the Troubadours ? 
 
 What does the name mean ? 
 
 Name some of them. 
 
 How did they differ from the Minnesingers? 
 
 How did the music of the two differ in principle? 
 
 What do you know of the Meistersinger ? 
 
 Who was the most distinguished of them? 
 
 What do you know of the characteristics of the Folk 
 song?
 
 LESSON IV. LESSON IV. 
 
 THE EPOCH OF THE NETHERLANDER8, 
 ABOUT 1400 TO 1600. 
 
 WITH the beginning of the fifteenth century 
 came a new and very important epoch in the history 
 of music the epoch of the development and cul- 
 tivation of the science and art of polyphony. It 
 is commonly called the epoch of the Netherlanders, 
 because Netherland composers took the most prom- 
 inent part in the movement, and were the most 
 prominent figures in the musical world for more 
 than a hundred and fifty years. After that time, 
 Italians and others, who had learned of them, 
 shared their supremacy, and with the death of 
 Orlandus Lassus, in 1595, they disappear from the 
 pages of history. 
 
 As we have already seen, the ground had been 
 prepared for them by the invention and gradual 
 improvement of an adequate system of notation, 
 and by numerous composers, who had tried their < be 
 hand at " discant." Harmonic knowledge had 
 advanced far enough to forbid parallel fifths and 
 octaves ; and " counterpoint," as discant was now 
 called, was both written and improvised with much 
 fluency. The task now before the musical world 
 was to develop and master musical materials on 
 the intellectual side. The emotional and imagina- 
 tive elements had to wait until the technic of 
 composition had been mastered and had become 
 thoroughly familiar. Those who now entered 
 upon this task were explorers, in spite of all that 
 had been done since Hucbald, that is to say, in the 
 past five hundred years. The contrapuntal forms 
 27 
 
 What had 
 already been 
 accomplished, 
 and what 
 problems ha<i
 
 28 
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 LESSON IV. 
 
 Dufay, 
 1380-1430. (?) 
 
 Ockenheim, 
 1430-1513. 
 
 were very incomplete ; the perception of harmony 
 was crude ; the means of securing unity, variety, 
 symmetry, contrast, climax, the essential elements 
 of a beautiful work of art, were undeveloped ; 
 probably these requirements themselves were but 
 very imperfectly apprehended. The perception 
 of these was to grow gradually all through this 
 epoch of the development of polyphony. Kemem- 
 ber that from 1400 up to the very last decade of 
 the sixteenth century, all culture music was poly- 
 phonic. 
 
 The first distinguished Netherland composer was 
 William Dufay, a Belgian. His contrapuntal 
 masses are the oldest of the kind preserved in 
 the archives of the papel Chapel at Rome, where 
 he was a tenor singer. Both in the progression of 
 his voices and in the treatment of his harmonies 
 he is said to have made marked advances on his 
 predecessors, and paved the way for a sharpened 
 perception of what is natural and fitting, in those 
 who were to come after him. He is generally 
 credited with the invention of Canon, a form of 
 strict imitation in which a melody is accompanied 
 by an exact repetition of itself at the interval of 
 an octave, fourth, fifth or some other interval, 
 the imitative melody beginning some time after 
 the original. These canons were then called 
 fugues (Latin, fuga, a flight), because one voice 
 pursued the other. The term " fugue " is now 
 applied to a more elaborate style of composition. 
 Dufay 's sense of rhythm and of harmony was a 
 long way behind what we are now accustomed 
 to, of course. He was a pioneer, but he was 
 a musician of great ability, so much so that his 
 name is used to characterize the first period of the 
 epoch of the Netherlander. 
 
 The name of Johannes Ockeuheim stands as
 
 EPOCH OF THE NETHERLANDERS. 
 
 29 
 
 representative of the second period of this great 
 epoch. He built on the foundation laid by Dufay. 
 His canons are more elaborate. Dufay had writ- 
 ten them only in the unison and octave ; Ocken- 
 heim wrote them also in the fourth and fifth, and 
 is also credited with the invention of double coun- 
 terpoint. He wrote a motette in thirty-six voice 
 parts. It is believed that only six, or perhaps 
 nine, of these were written out, the others being 
 canonic imitations, all being finally sung together. 
 He is said to show a good deal of natural musical 
 perception ; but his works are mainly the product 
 of calculation. It was his task as well as that of 
 other composers in his epoch to develop contra- 
 puntal technic. This service they rendered most 
 thoroughly and effectually. The intellectual 
 world has ever since reaped the benefit of their 
 long-continued, severe intellectual exertion, a men- 
 tal activity which changed the whole aspect of 
 musical history. 
 
 Although Josquin de Pres was born not many 
 years later than Ockenheim, he shows marked ad- 
 vances on the latter's work in the direction of emo- 
 tional expression. He was perhaps not greatly 
 superior to Ockenheim on the merely intellectual 
 and technical side, although he carried the art of 
 counterpoint so far that it may fairly be said to have 
 culminated in his work. But he seems to have 
 had a more powerful imagination and stronger 
 musical feeling, and his mastery of his materials 
 and of all technical resources was such that he 
 could give his imagination freer play than could 
 any of his predecessors or contemporaries. This 
 freedom and mastery of his art was well expressed 
 by Luther, a great admirer of his, who said of him : 
 " Josquin is a master of the notes ; they have to 
 do as he pleases ; other composers have to do as 
 
 LESSON IV. 
 
 Josquin 
 de /Vi, 
 1440-1521.
 
 30 
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 they please." In short, Josquin seems to have 
 been a genuine creative genius, who not only mas- 
 tered easily all that was then known of the art 
 and science of music, but who had also an inborn 
 perception of musical relations which others either 
 could not see or discovered only by the most la- 
 borious and painful search. This made his creative 
 activity in the invention of melodies and of compli- 
 cated counterpoint "as free as the song of a finch," 
 as Luther elsewhere expresses it. It is probable, 
 however, that, with all his genius, there was a 
 good deal of the pedantry of the time in his work. 
 A man who could take the trouble to set the pedi- 
 gree of Christ to music on two different occasions 
 could hardly have been always impelled to compo- 
 sition by the forces of feeling and imagination. 
 No small part of his work must have been mechan- 
 ical and artificial. 
 
 It is thoroughly characteristic of the first three 
 periods of the Netherland epoch that no attention 
 whatever was paid to suiting the music to the 
 emotional character of the words. This indiffer- 
 ence to truthfulness of musical expression was 
 carried to the extreme of grotesqueness. In the 
 contrapuntal masses not only were secular mel- 
 odies employed as counter-subjects to the Gregorian 
 plain-song, but the words of these secular songs 
 were also retained and were interwoven with those 
 of the sacred office. And some of their songs 
 were anything but edifying, drinking songs, love 
 songs of a decidedly unrefined character, and so 
 on ; so that while one set of singers was chanting 
 " Agnus Dei, (jui tollis peccata mundi " (" Lamb 
 of God, who takest away the sins of the world "), 
 another set would be singing, in the vernacular, 
 songs fit only for convivial gatherings of pleasure 
 seekers, and coarse pleasure seekers at that!
 
 EPOCH OF THE NETHERLANDERS. 
 
 31 
 
 Besides this, these masses were named from the 
 secular songs that were most prominent in them. 
 There was one very popular song called " L' hom- 
 me arme " (The armed man), which was used, text 
 and all, over and over again by different composers. 
 Few seemed to think of anything profane in 
 " The Mass of the Armed Man," or "The Mass of 
 the Red Noses " ! As Dr. Langhans has pointed 
 out in the fourth of his lectures on the history of 
 music, " this proceeding was closely analogous to 
 that of the painters of the fourteenth and fifteenth 
 centuries, who painted themselves and their fami- 
 lies in their ordinary costumes, in the same group 
 with the Madonna and the Holy Child. They 
 seemed to have felt such things not as a profana- 
 tion of what was sacred, but as a sort of conse- 
 cration of the secular elements of the composition." 
 
 Josquin seems to have had a sufficiently strong 
 feeling for the emotional element in music to see 
 the propriety of selecting secular melodies and 
 words as nearly allied as possible in sentiment to 
 the sacred words with which they were to be asso- 
 ciated. At least, he sometimes did this. With 
 him the special, peculiar work of the Netherlanders 
 may be said to culminate. Practically, the tech- 
 nic of polyphonic composition was complete, 
 within the limits of the tonalities of the mediaeval 
 scales. The work of Josquin's successors, up to 
 the beginning of the eighteenth century, was to 
 apply this acquired musical material and musical 
 knowledge to the expression of feeling, both 
 sacred and secular. 
 
 The fourth great name among the Netherland 
 masters is Adrian Willaert (pron. Willart), the 
 founder of a music school in Venice which had a 
 very wide and deep influence on musical progress. 
 He was director of music in St. Mark's, a large 
 
 LESSON IV. 
 
 Joujv.m't 
 advance in 
 truth of 
 emotional 
 expresiion. 
 
 Wittaeri, 
 1490-15W.
 
 32 
 
 LESSON'S IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 IV. 
 
 church with a gallery and an organ at each end, 
 and numerous side galleries. Willaert conceived 
 the idea of making his complicated polyphonic 
 music more intelligible to his hearers by dividing 
 it between two choirs stationed at either end of the 
 church, in the two organ galleries. This experi- 
 ment was so marked a success that he carried it 
 further, stationing separate choirs in the different 
 galleries, until finally he had nine choirs, each of 
 four parts, thirty-six parts in all. Of course, this 
 arrangement made the music incalculably more 
 comprehensible than Ockenheim's mass in thirty- 
 six parts had been, given, as it was, under differ- 
 ent conditions, and went far in helping to concen- 
 trate attention on musical expression. 
 
 Willaert did not confine his creative activity to 
 church music. His secular music, like his church 
 music, was polyphonic. He set secular songs for 
 five, six and seven voices, according to strict con- 
 trapuntal rules. These compositions were called 
 madrigals. They were the fashion in secular 
 music through a large part of the sixteenth cen- 
 tury and until they were supplanted by the air 
 and recitative, after the invention of the opera. 
 Constanzo Festa and Luca Marenzio were among 
 the greatest of madrigal writers. In England, 
 Morley, Kirbye, Dowland, Weelkes, Wilbye and 
 Benet accomplished much in this field. 
 
 Two pupils and successors of Willaert contrib- 
 uted very materially to the transformation of poly- 
 phony into expressive music. These were Cyprian 
 de Rore, a Netherlander by birth, and Gioseffo 
 Zarlino, an Italian, the first of his nation to 
 rival the Netherlander in their own field. De 
 Rore wrote a vast mass of Catholic church music 
 for St. Mark's and a large number of madrigals. 
 His most important service to musical progress was
 
 EPOCH OF THE NETHERLANDERS. 
 
 33 
 
 in the innovations to be found in his " Chromatic 
 Madrigals," published in 1544. Up to that time 
 madrigals had conformed their tonality to the 
 Gregorian scales, which formed the basis of church 
 music. But de Rore made a much freer use of 
 chromatic intervals than had been made before, 
 and thus greatly increased the expressive possi- 
 bilities of music. 
 
 Zarlino succeeded de Rore as the director of music 
 in St. Mark's Church, as de Rore succeeded Wil- 
 laert. He wrote a great deal of excellent music, 
 but his greatest contribution to musical progress 
 was in the domain of theory. He was the most 
 thorough and original writer of his time in har- 
 mony and acoustics, and his writings had a great 
 and far-reaching influence on musical intelligence.* 
 
 The last of the great Netherlander was Orlan- 
 dus Lassus. The best of his life's work was done 
 in Munich, where he was " capellmeister," or 
 director of church music. He was a genuine 
 creative genius, and much of his music retains its 
 interest and charm to the present day. He wrote, 
 of course, Catholic church music and a great 
 many madrigals. Some of his music, both sacred 
 and secular, has been republished in our own time, 
 and is now easily accessible. 
 
 Contemporary with Orlandus Lassus was a great 
 Italian composer, who, educated in the principles 
 of the Netherlander, surpassed them all, unless 
 we count Lassus as an exception, in point of the 
 mastery of polyphonic music as a means of emo- 
 tional expression. This was Pier Luigi Sante, 
 born at Palestrina, near Rome, and commonly 
 called by the name of his birthplace. He was 
 
 * For an excellent account of some of his most important ideas, see 
 "The Nature of Harmony," by Dr. Hugo Riemann, translated by the 
 writer of the present work and published by Theo. Presser, Philadelphia. 
 
 3 
 
 LESSON IV. 
 
 Orlandus 
 
 Lasmts, 
 
 1520-1595. 
 
 Palestrina, 
 1524-1594.
 
 34 
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL 
 
 LESSON IV. 
 
 The Mina 
 "las MarceUi. 
 
 educated at Rome by Claude Goudimel, a Nethei- 
 land teacher and composer of great merit, who 
 founded the first public music school in Rome. 
 Palestrina was not only a perfect master of the 
 whole science and art of music as practiced in his 
 time, but was an original genius of a high order. 
 
 Palestrina's fame is, however, largely due to an 
 accident of history. The Council of Trent, in 
 March, 1563, discussed the abuses which had crept 
 into church music, such as the complicated char- 
 acter of the masses, which made them unintelligi- 
 ble, the use of secular songs in them, etc. Tho 
 assembled cardinals were fully alive to these evils, 
 for, now that polyphony was fully developed, peo 
 pie had begun to feel the necessity of using music 
 as a means of emotional expression ; moreover, the 
 success of the Lutheran movement in Germany 
 was attributed, in no small degree, to the popular 
 church music introduced by Luther, the emotiona. 
 effect of which was very different from that of tKe 
 polyphonic masses of the Catholic composers. Ths 
 council had almost decided to abolish all culture-, 
 music from the Catholic Church, retaining only tho 
 Gregorian chant. But wiser counsels prevailed,, 
 It was suggested that at least one experiments 
 ought to be made to determine whether, after aiL 1 
 the highest form of music known could not DC 
 made to subserve the highest religious ends. Pale!-: 
 trina was commissioned to write some music, fch 
 effect of which should decide the fate of Catholic 
 church music. He wrote three masses, one ct 
 which, especially dedicated to the memory of hi9 
 patron, Pope Marcellus II, and hence called the 
 " Missa PapcB Marcelli," may fairly be considered 
 j not only the culmination of the polyphonic music 
 of this great epoch, as regards all the requirements 
 of an art- work, intellectual, emotional and Lnaghi-
 
 EPOCH OF THE NETHERLANDERS. 
 
 35 
 
 ative, but also as the culmination of Catholic 
 church music even up to the present time. No 
 modern writer has written any mass which so 
 embodies the most characteristic feelings of the 
 Roman liturgy. 
 
 The success of these masses was immediate, and 
 nothing more was said of returning to the bald 
 simplicity of the ancient Gregorian chant. They 
 were classical music in every sense of the word. 
 Their form was perfect, their content was noble; the 
 form exactly fitted the content and the content ex- 
 actly filled the form. Their excellence was such 
 that they have exerted a powerful influence down 
 to the present time, and there are no signs of its 
 waning. Palestrina's death, therefore, marks not 
 only the culmination but the close of the first 
 great classical epoch. Among Palestrina's distin- 
 guished contemporaries may be mentioned Nanini, 
 Morales, Anton Gabrieli, Giovanni Gabrieli, Vit- 
 toria, Arcadeldt, Clement (" non Papa "), Waelrant 
 and Lajeune, 
 
 LESSON IV.
 
 36 
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 LESSON IV. 
 
 QUESTIONS. 
 
 What phase of musical progress characterized the 
 epoch of the Netherlander ? 
 
 What proportion of these two centuries was taken up 
 with the development of the technic of polyphonic wri- 
 ting? 
 
 How much of it was applied to the use of polyphony 
 for emotional expression ? 
 
 Who was the first of the great Netherland composers ? 
 
 Give dates. 
 
 What did he do? 
 
 What is a canon? 
 
 Give name and dates of the second great Netherlander. 
 
 What advance did he make on Dufay ? 
 
 Who was the third Netherlander? 
 
 What advance did he make? 
 
 What did Luther say of him? 
 
 How did the early Netherland composers treat the 
 words to which they set their music? 
 
 Tell what you know of their mixture of secular with 
 sacred words and music. 
 
 la which of them does a sense of the propriety of 
 suiting the music to the feeling of the words begin to 
 appear ? 
 
 What do you know of Willaert? 
 
 Describe especially his attempts to render complicated 
 polyphony intelligible. 
 
 What form of secular music was prevalent in his time? 
 
 What do you know of de Rore and Zarlino ? 
 
 Who was the last of the great Netherlanders ? 
 
 Tell what you know of him and of his great Italian 
 contemporary. 
 
 What is Palestrina's best-known work? 
 
 Why is it called " classical " ?
 
 LESSON V. 
 
 THE RISE OF DRAMATIC MUSIC, 1600. 
 
 THE fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were a 
 time of great intellectual and spiritual activity in 
 Europe. The long night of the Dark Ages had 
 passed and the dawn of the new era had come. 
 Everywhere there was intellectual and spiritual 
 impulse, the thirst for knowledge, the craving for 
 mental freedom, the spirit of free inquiry. Men 
 chafed under the limitations imposed on them by 
 the scholastic philosophy, the prevalent ancient 
 theology, the current ideas of the time. This im- 
 pulse led to the Reformation in Germany, Eng- 
 land, Holland, Switzerland, and to similar move- 
 ments elsewhere. It led also to violent attempts, 
 on the part of those who held to the ideas here- 
 tofore dominant, to crush out the new ideas 
 and to suppress the forward movement of mind, 
 to the establishment of the Inquisition, to bloody 
 persecutions, massacres, like that of St. Bartholo- 
 mew, the driving out of the Protestants from 
 France, the crushing of them in Spain and in Aus- 
 tria, to civil wars, disorders and confusions, out 
 of all which, at length, Modern Europe was to 
 emerge. 
 
 This great movement of mind was greatly as- 
 sisted by the invention of the art of Printing, 
 which began to exert a powerful influence about 
 the middle of the fifteenth century. Up to this 
 time few, except the clergy, were able to read or 
 write. Manuscripts were few and costly. But the 
 new art brought ideas within the reach of every- 
 body ; the desire to read and write soon became 
 37 
 
 LESSON V. 
 
 How the ground 
 was prepared. 
 
 The art of 
 printing, about 
 1450.
 
 38 
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 LESSON V. 
 
 Gunpowder at 
 a civilizing 
 agent. 
 
 general, and a new era of popular intelligence be- 
 gan. The common people began to feel within 
 themselves desires and impulses which they had 
 never felt so long as they had taken it for granted 
 that those who were their superiors in wealth and 
 in position must necessarily be their superiors in 
 intelligence also, and in the power which intelli- 
 gence brings. There was a great increase in self- 
 respect, in hope and faith in their own capacity 
 for improvement, and in their own future destiny, 
 on the part of men who had heretofore been hope- 
 less and helpless, the mere tools and servants of 
 powerful masters. Of course, the early results of 
 all this upward striving were social and political 
 disorders. The newly awakened hopes and desires of 
 the ignorant were often extravagant and unreason- 
 able. They had to learn wisdom and soberness 
 by the bitter experience of their own mistakes and 
 follies. And of course, too, those who felt that 
 their own vital interest lay in the preservation of 
 the ancient order opposed the new movement by 
 every means in their power. 
 
 In the political struggles resulting from the 
 irrepressible conflict of the new ideas with the old, 
 one of the most potent agencies in hastening the 
 downfall of the old feudal system and the tri- 
 umph of the new order was gunpowder. It may 
 strike us as strange, at first, that a mere mechan- 
 ically destructive agent should really contribute 
 to the triumph of ideas, and to mental and spiritual 
 progress. But we must remember that the most 
 determined efforts were made to crush the new 
 movement of mind by physical force; that the 
 champions of reaction had the wealth and most of 
 the world's physical power on their side, and that 
 the victory of the new over the old must have 
 come much later than it did if the invention of
 
 THE RISE OF DRAMATIC MUSIC. 
 
 39 
 
 gunpowder had not greatly lessened the difference 
 between the weak and the strong as regards de- 
 structive and defensive power. Previous to this 
 invention, which began to be effective about the 
 same time as the art of printing, the feudal lords 
 and the authorities of the Church had matters 
 their own way. A robber baron, safely ensconced 
 in his impregnable castle, perched on an inacces- 
 sible rock, feared no one except, perhaps, his feu- 
 dal superior, or the Church, which could inflict on 
 him spiritual pains and penalties, even to the ex- 
 treme of everlasting torture in hell-fire. Com- 
 mon people he despised and trampled upon with 
 impunity. Clad in their coats of mail, he and his 
 comrades could easily subdue any number of 
 rudely armed peasants ; his castle was proof against 
 all possible attacks from them, and any effort at 
 resisting his insupportable tyranny was followed 
 by horrible punishments. 
 
 But coats of mail were not impervious to bul- 
 lets, nor could castles, which were proof against 
 all attempts to scale them, resist the force of can- 
 non balls. Gunpowder changed all the conditions 
 of warfare, made a weak man as good as a strong 
 one in battle, put an end to the invincibility of the 
 fortifications then in vogue ; in short, brought com- 
 mon men much nearer an equality with their for- 
 mer masters as regards physical power, and ush- 
 ered in the inevitable downfall of political and 
 social oppression. Itself a product of human in- 
 vention, it did a great service in the cause of intel- 
 lectual and spiritual freedom and of the mental 
 elevation of the race. 
 
 Another event, which seemed on the face of it 
 to be a retrograde movement in the world's progress 
 and a detriment to advancing civilization in Eu- 
 rope, really contributed much to the great intel- 
 
 LESSOV V. 
 
 The conqutil o) 
 Constantinople 
 by the Turks, 
 1453.
 
 40 
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 LESSON V. 
 
 Beginning of 
 the revival of 
 letters. 
 
 Opera came 
 from the study 
 of the Greek 
 Drama. 
 
 lectual movement out of which our modern civil- 
 ization has come. This was the conquest of 
 Constantinople by the Turks in the year 1453. 
 This great Eastern capital held the remains of the 
 Greek civilization and the Greek literature. The 
 latter was as yet unknown to Western Europe, 
 at least in its original form. Some Latin transla- 
 tions of Greek works existed in Italy, but no one 
 studied Greek, or had ever read in the original 
 the great literary masterpieces of the most intel- 
 lectual race the world had ever seen. Greek 
 learning and culture was confined to Eastern 
 scholars, mainly those of Constantinople, the great 
 Eastern metropolis and intellectual centre. Its 
 conquest by the Turks drove them out. They 
 went as exiles into Italy, carrying with them the 
 Greek ideas, language and literature ; they were 
 scattered among the Italian cities, and there sowed 
 far and wide the seeds which grew up into the 
 Renascence (or Renaissance, as it is more commonly 
 called). Wherever they settled, men became in- 
 terested in the great literary and artistic achieve- 
 ments of the ancient Greek race, the Greek lan- 
 guage began to be studied, the Greek epics and 
 dramas were read and re-read with the keenest 
 delight, the love of knowledge was kindled, the 
 love of Art became a passionate enthusiasm, and 
 the intellectual impulse called the Revival of 
 Learning became an irresistible force. 
 
 The invention of the Opera, one of the most 
 important, decisive and productive events in mu- 
 sical history, was part and parcel of this great 
 intellectual movement. It is one of the great 
 turning points in the development of modern 
 music ; it changed the whole course of musical 
 history. But it might never have happened at all 
 if the revival of Greek letters had not come just
 
 THE RISE OF DRAMATIC MUSIC. 
 
 41 
 
 as it did. The invention of opera was the direct 
 result of attempts on the part of a few enthusiastic 
 lovers of the Greek literature to revive the Greek 
 drama. 
 
 It happened in the very last decade of the six- 
 teenth century, about a hundred and forty years 
 after the taking of Constantinople, when the 
 leaven of ancient Greek art and literature had had 
 time to leaven thoroughly the whole mass of Italian 
 intellect and to permeate all Italian culture. It 
 happened in Florence, under the reign of the art- 
 loving family of Medici, who made their capital 
 for a long time one of the most important intel- 
 lectual centres of Europe. 
 
 There was a little knot of enthusiasts, some of 
 them artists, all of them men of culture, the best 
 culture of their time, who used to meet at the 
 house of Count Bardi to discuss art, literature and 
 all intellectual matters in which they were inter- 
 ested. They called their society the " Camerata." 
 Among them was a name ever since known all 
 over the civilized world, Vincenzo Galilei, father 
 of the great astronomer, Galileo Galilei. Among 
 other matters, they read and discussed the dramas 
 of ^Eschylus, Euripides and Sophocles, not only 
 as literature, but as productions for the stage, the 
 conditions under which they were performed, the 
 ideals of life they embody ; in short, everything 
 connected with them. Finally, it occurred to 
 some of them to ask " Why cannot this great form 
 of Art be revived ? Why cannot we do what the 
 old Greeks did ?" The suggestion at once ex- 
 cited unbounded enthusiasm, and ways and means 
 were eagerly discussed. It was known that the 
 ancient drama was not spoken, but sung. The 
 principal characters used a sort of chant with an 
 accompaniment of the lyre, and the choruses were 
 
 LESSON V. 
 
 The "Came- 
 rala." 
 
 They tn tr re- 
 vi"(. the Greek
 
 42 
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 LESSON V. 
 
 The prevalent 
 lick of any mo- 
 nophonic music. 
 
 First tongs with 
 accompaniment 
 by Vincenzo 
 (iaiUei. 
 
 Oaccini follows 
 Mt example. 
 
 also sung. But when the members of the Camerata 
 came to consider the musical resources of their 
 own time they found nothing available for the 
 dramatic needs of soloists. The chorus was amply 
 provided for, for the whole culture-music of the 
 time was polyphonic. They were just at the very 
 culmination of the great epoch of polyphonic 
 music, of which the Netherlander were the most 
 conspicuous representatives, the epoch which, 
 beginning with Dufay, had developed polyphonic 
 writing on the technical and intellectual side, and 
 had culminated in the highly emotional, spiritual 
 and imaginative, as well as highly intellectual, 
 compositions of Palestrina and Orlandus Lassus. 
 The secular element, the Madrigal, was as purely 
 polyphonic as the Masses of the period. 
 
 How should the soloists be provided for ? This 
 was the problem the members of the Camerata set 
 themselves to solve. The first fruits of this en- 
 deavor were produced by Galilei, who wrote a 
 number of songs for solo voice and sang them to 
 his assembled comrades, accompanying himself on 
 the viola. Everybody applauded with eager en- 
 thusiasm, and now others of the society took up 
 the matter. Some of them were musicians by pro- 
 fession, and one of them, Giulio Caccini, declared 
 war upon counterpoint as a " mere butchery of 
 poetry," affirmed that he had learned more of the 
 true function of music in the Camerata than in all 
 his thirty years' study of counterpoint, and vowed 
 henceforth to devote all his talents, skill and ac- 
 quired musical knowledge to the service of the new 
 ideas. He was, of course, much better equipped 
 for such a task than was Galilei, who was only an 
 amateur, and the solos he wrote, on the model of 
 Galilei's, fairly ushered in the new era of mono- 
 phonic song with instrumental accompaniment.
 
 THE RISE OF DRAM-ATIC MUSIC. 
 
 43 
 
 Opera was now possible, for the air would serve 
 to express the emotions of the principal charac- 
 ters, while the chorus served to express those of 
 several persons who needed to sing together. But 
 an aria (air) involves sustained intensity of feeling 
 for a certain length of time, whereas there are in 
 a drama many transient emotions, many mere sug- 
 gestions of feeling, besides more or less dialogue, 
 for which sustained solo singing is not adapted, at 
 least, not in the form of the aria. These parts 
 might, of course, have been spoken. But Jacopo 
 Peri, another of the Camerata set, still with the 
 notion of Greek -drama in his head, all of which 
 was sung, hit upon the Recitative, a style so well 
 adapted to its purpose that it has retained its 
 place to the present day, and seems unlikely ever 
 to be superseded. It is a sort of compromise be- 
 tween song and speech, a sort of impassioned 
 declamation, partaking of the nature of both. 
 
 With this invention the means of producing 
 music dramas were fully completed, and Peri was 
 the man who produced the first opera. He was a 
 professional musician, a singer and an organist, 
 amply qualified for the work he had undertaken, 
 and his first opera, " Dafne," met with the most 
 cordial reception in the Camerata. The words 
 were by Rintiuccini, who also belonged to the so- 
 ciety. The success of their first work encouraged 
 them to write another, and this one, " Eurydice," 
 was publicly performed at the wedding of Henry 
 IV of France with Mary of Medici in Florence, 
 in the year 1600. 
 
 It constitutes one of the turning points of his- 
 tory. At the very opening of the seventeenth 
 century, just when the elaborate polyphony of the 
 Netherland school was at the height of its suprem- 
 acy, came this new phenomenon, and behold, all 
 
 LESSON V. 
 
 Recitative in- 
 vented by 
 Jacopo Peri. 
 
 Peri's first two 
 operas, 
 "J5a/i" an<f 
 " Eurydice."
 
 44 
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 LESSON V. 
 
 of a sudden, the whole face of the musical world 
 is changed. In France, in Germany, in England, 
 no less than in Italy, kings, princes and noblemen 
 took up the new form of art, and from that day to 
 this it has been developing. It is a long way from 
 Peri's " Dafne " to Wagner's " Tristan and Isolde," 
 but the germs of the latter were in the former.
 
 THE RISE OF DRAMATIC MUSIC. 
 
 45 
 
 QUESTIONS. 
 
 of 
 
 Give some account of the intellectual condition 
 Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. 
 
 When did the art of printing begin to exert a powerful 
 influence? 
 
 What was the effect of it? 
 
 What effect did the use of gunpowder produce on the 
 mental life of Europe? 
 
 When did this effect begin to be felt? 
 
 Give date of the conquest of Constantinople by the 
 Turks. 
 
 What effect had this event on the intellectual life of 
 Italy? 
 
 What do you understand by the Renaissance? 
 
 What has all this to do with the History of Music? 
 
 Tell what you know of the Florentine "Camerata." 
 
 Which of its members first wrote songs for a single 
 voice, with instrumental accompaniment? 
 
 What professional musician followed this up? 
 
 Who wrote the first opera? 
 
 Who invented recitative? 
 
 What is recitative ? 
 
 What opera was first publicly performed? 
 
 When and where? 
 
 Who wrote it? 
 
 LESSON V.
 
 LESSON VI. 
 
 Difference in 
 origin between 
 opera and ora- 
 torio. 
 
 Need of dra- 
 matic elements 
 in the Church 
 services. 
 
 Origin and 
 character of 
 these dramatic 
 elements. 
 
 LESSON VI. 
 
 THE BEGINNING OF ORATORIO, 1600. 
 
 OPERA, as we saw in the last chapter, grew out of 
 an attempt on the part of enthusiastic lovers of 
 art and literature to revive the Greek drama. It 
 was one of the fruits of the Revival of Learning, 
 a great intellectual movement which, beginning 
 in Italy, communicated its impulse to the whole 
 European world, and largely determined the course 
 of mental development and of Western civiliza- 
 tion from that time to the present. Oratorio, on 
 the other hand, was an outgrowth of the Church. 
 But it was, no less than the opera, distinctly dra- 
 matic in its origin. 
 
 As soon as the Church had got far enough from 
 the corrupt Roman theatrical spectacles, which it 
 had to condemn in the first few centuries of its 
 existence, to be in no danger from the remem- 
 brance of their demoralizing influences, it began 
 to feel the need of attracting and influencing its 
 proselytes by some means other than its ordinary 
 liturgy and its preaching. The common people 
 could neither read nor write. They were not only 
 illiterate, but ignorant. They could not read the 
 Scriptures for themselves, and if they could have 
 done so, the Church authorities would have op- 
 posed it, preferring to be themselves the sole 
 medium, not only of the exposition, but of the 
 communication, of Holy Writ to the laity. 
 
 The clergy, recognizing the fact that an ignorant 
 
 laity were more likely to be impressed by sensuous 
 
 elements in the liturgy than by those more purely 
 
 spiritual or intellectual, soon began to introduee 
 
 46
 
 THE BEGINNING OF ORATORIO. 
 
 Mysteries, Mo- 
 ratifies and 
 Miracle-splays. 
 
 into the church services a semi- dramatic treat- LES " OWVI - 
 inent of gospel readings. One priest recited the 
 sayings of Jesus, another those of the Evange- 
 list, while the utterances of the disciples and of 
 the populace were sung by the choir. After a 
 while, poems were introduced among the settings 
 of the gospel text, especially in Passion week, 
 and took their place in the choir beside the other 
 Passion music. The dramatic element became 
 more and more prominent, and by and by it was 
 separated from the liturgy. The priests gave 
 dramatic representations in the churches for the 
 amusement and instruction of their parishioners. 
 
 These sacred plays were divided into Mysteries, 
 which treated such mysterious themes as Sin, 
 Redemption , etc. ; Moralities, in which personifi- 
 cations of the Virtues and Vices were the char- 
 acters of the drama, and. Miracle-plays, which 
 dealt with Scripture stories and with the legends 
 of the saints. In these dramatic representations 
 in the churches, no women were allowed to take 
 part. The priests were the only actors, taking 
 female as well as male parts. They represented 
 such characters as God, Christ, Mary, the angels, 
 etc., and they succeeded in making the plays 
 very popular. The churches used to be crowded, 
 and these plays were given so frequently that they 
 formed a chief amusement of the common people, 
 as well as their sole means of Biblical instruction. 
 
 After a while the churches could not contain 
 the vast audience which thronged to hear and see d 
 the sacred plays, and then they were taken into 
 the open air. Temporary stages of great size were 
 erected in market places and in other open spaces. 
 Sometimes hundreds of actors took part, and a 
 seriesof representations, lasting for several days, 
 "would be witnessed by many thousands of people. 
 
 Secularization 
 of thfse sacred 
 dramas.
 
 48 
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 LESSON VI. 
 
 Degradation of 
 them by reason 
 of the secular 
 element. 
 
 Laymen, as well as priests, took part in them, and 
 secular elements of a popular character were 
 mingled with those distinctively sacred. As was 
 natural, considering the unrefined state of the 
 common mind, these secular elements were often 
 exceedingly coarse, consisting of rude jests, and, 
 in great part, of a jocular treatment of the devil. 
 Old Nick was, indeed, a most popular character. 
 He was treated not so much as the impersonation 
 of evil, as a foolish clown, whose attempts at harm 
 were always foiled, and who invariably came to 
 grief in some ridiculous, farcical way. The great 
 stages on which the plays were performed were 
 often divided into three parts. The uppermost 
 represented Heaven, the middle one the Earth and 
 the lowermost Hell. Even in our day there is a 
 survival of these miracle-plays in the Passion Play 
 still given every ten years at Ober-Ammergau, in 
 Bavaria. 
 
 With the admixture of secular elements and 
 the admission of strolling actors and minstrels as 
 performers, the plays grew more and more profane, 
 until at last the coarsest and most scandalous jests 
 and songs became a prominent feature. These low 
 elements even invaded the churches. At the 
 " Fools' Festival," a sort of Christian revival of 
 the Roman Saturnalia, the churches were the 
 scenes of indescribably coarse revelry. A " Fool- 
 Bishop " celebrated a burlesque mass ; the censers 
 were filled with pieces of old boot-leather, which 
 filled the church with an intolerable stench ; dice 
 were cast and cards played on the altar; the 
 priest invoked coarse maledictions instead of bless- 
 ings on the congregation ; in short, all sacred 
 ideas and rites were parodied in the most outra- 
 geously profane way. 
 
 The " Feast of the Ass " was little better. It
 
 THE BEGINNING OF ORATORIO. 
 
 49 
 
 commemorated the flight of Joseph and Mary into 
 Egypt. An ass, dressed in a monk's costume, was 
 led into the church, the priest intoned the Latin 
 hymn, " Orientis partibus," closing each verse with 
 an imitation of the ass's braying, to which the 
 whole congregation responded with an uproarious 
 hee-haw ! 
 
 This sort of profanation could not, of course, be 
 tolerated long, and the Church authorities frowned 
 it down. But, while the outdoor performances 
 continued to deal more or less in low elements, 
 there were, in at least one place, purified continu- 
 ations of the original miracle-plays, etc., in sacred 
 places. This was in the " Oratorio " (the Italian 
 name for chapel, or, as we sometimes say, oratory; 
 properly, a room for prayer) of a church in Rome, 
 where St. Philip Neri was a priest. In this " ora- 
 torio" he used to preach, and in order to attract 
 the young people, he used to have, at first, a good 
 deal of singing before and after the sermon. Then 
 he wrote simple dramatizations of various Scrip- 
 ture stories in one act, had them set to music by 
 Animucia, director of music in the Papal chapel, 
 and gave one before the serm6n and one after it. 
 Palestrina afterward wrote some of the music for 
 these little chapel or " oratorio " plays. Neri's 
 plan proved very successful in attracting the au- 
 diences he wished, especially as they were mostly 
 given in Lent, when secular amusements were pro- 
 hibited. Whether his sermons were popular or 
 not, his musical plays were very much so. Since 
 they were given exclusively in his " oratorio," to 
 go to hear them was to go to the " oratorio ;" and 
 this name has ever since been applied to that form 
 of sacred musical art which grew out of his idea. 
 
 The piece which is accounted the first real ora- 
 torio, probably because it was long enough to take 
 4 
 
 LESSON VI. 
 
 The origin of 
 "oratorio." 
 
 Signification of 
 the name. 
 
 Thejint ora- 
 torio.
 
 50 
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 LESSON VI 
 
 Difference b. 
 tween thi eart^ 
 opera and or 
 torio. 
 
 up a whole evening, instead of being a mere prelude 
 or postlude to a sermon, was simply a Morality, 
 written by a lady Laura Guidiccioui and set to 
 music by Emilio del Cavaliere. It was given at 
 Rome, probably in St. Philip Neri's chapel, in the 
 year 1600, the very same year in which the first 
 opera was given at Florence. It was called " The 
 Representation of the Soul and the Body." Among 
 the solo characters were Time, Pleasure, the World, 
 Human Life, etc. These last three were gayly and 
 richly dressed at first, and afterward were to be- 
 come poor and wretched, and finally to die. There 
 was a chorus and orchestra, the whole was acted, 
 and the performance closed with a ballet, to music 
 sung by the chorus. The stage directions require 
 that it be danced " sedately and reverentially." 
 
 Thus we see tfiat the early oratorio differed 
 very little in principle from the early opera. Both 
 were dramas, both employed much the same mu- 
 sical means, solos, chorus and orchestra, both were 
 acted, both admitted the ballet. But the one had 
 a distinctively moral and religious aim, while the 
 other had not. So that, while the forms of the 
 oratorio were influenced greatly by those of the 
 opera, its different aim and purpose gradually 
 brought about the real distinction which exists to- 
 day between the two species. Oratorio ceased to 
 be acted, excluded dancing, and admitted only 
 serious and devout music.
 
 THE BEGINNING OF ORATORIO. 
 
 51 
 
 QUESTIONS. 
 
 Did opera and oratorio have their origin in the same 
 intellectual movement? 
 
 What was the movement which finally gave rise to the 
 oratorio ? 
 
 Why did the clergy introduce a dramatic treatment of 
 Scripture readings into the service? 
 
 Describe the growth of this tendency. 
 
 Tell the difference between Mysteries, Moralities and 
 Miracle-plays. 
 
 Describe the process by which the plays degenerated. 
 
 Describe the "Fools' Festival " and the "Feast of the 
 Ass." 
 
 Who was St. Philip Neri? 
 
 What means did he take to interest his congregation? 
 
 Where were his plays given? 
 
 What does the word "oratorio" mean? 
 
 How came it to be applied to a form of musical art ? 
 
 Who wrote the first oratorio, and when? 
 
 Tell what you know of it. 
 
 Give the points of resemblance between the early opera 
 and oratorio. 
 
 Show the lines on which they afterward diverged. 
 
 LESSON VI.
 
 LESSON VII. 
 
 Musical su- 
 premacy of 
 Italy. 
 
 English com- 
 poseri. 
 
 LESSON VII. 
 
 GENERAL SURVEY OF THE MUSICAL SITUATION 
 AT THE END OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY, 
 CONDITION OF INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC. 
 
 IN the year 1600 Italian supremacy in music 
 had fairly begun, a supremacy which was to 
 continue unquestioned for more than a century. 
 Taught by the great Netherlaud contrapuntists 
 nearly all of whom spent their lives, did their 
 life-work and found their public in Italy the 
 Italian composers had not only equaled but sur- 
 passed their Flemish masters. The great epoch 
 of Polyphony, based on the church modes, had 
 culminated in Palestrina, and had found numerous 
 representatives in all the leading cities of Italy. 
 Venice, especially, had developed a school and 
 style of its own. Since Willaert's time there had 
 been a succession of organists, conductors and 
 composers in the Cathedral of St. Mark, every 
 one of whom was distinguished, many of them 
 being of the first, or nearly the first, rank. They 
 had cultivated the Madrigal as the form of secular 
 music, and from Italy it had spread to Germany, 
 France, Spain and England. 
 
 The English madrigal writers of Elizabeth's 
 time were among the best in Europe. The age of 
 Elizabeth and of Shakespeare was the first great 
 flourishing period of English musical Art. Men 
 like Tallis, Byrd, Morley, Dowland, Weelkes, 
 Wilbye, Ward, Sennet, Sateson, Gibbons, Hilton 
 and Bull ranked with the best European com- 
 posers of the time, especially in the field of the 
 madrigal and of organ and virginal music. The 
 52
 
 MUSIC IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 53 
 
 music of the Anglican Church afforded less scope LESSON V11 - 
 for composers than did that of the Catholic Church, 
 and Puritan fanaticism had operated to check its 
 development, so that the English Church music 
 of this time was not only inferior to that of the 
 Catholic Church, but also to that of the Lutheran 
 Church in Germany, where not only had there 
 been no unfavorable influences, but Luther him- 
 self had used all his vast power and influence to 
 make music a most important factor in the Prot- 
 estant Reformation. Nevertheless, these English 
 composers wrote many excellent anthems, some 
 of which are in use to this day. 
 
 Musical matters in Germany may fairly be said . German mv*ic. 
 to have followed Luther's leadership. Himself a 
 genuine lover of music and with highly cultivated 
 musical gifts, he was wise enough to call to his aid 
 the best composers of the time. Besides this, 
 like the Wesleys, afterward, in England, he intro- 
 duced popular melodies into the church services, 
 speedily transformed and divested them of all 
 unworthy associations, set his congregations to 
 singing them in unison, and made them a great 
 uplifting religious force. The Lutheran Choral 
 became, and remains to this day, the best ex- 
 pression of the true spirit of the Reformation, as 
 the Gregorian chant, culminating in the masses of 
 Palestrina, is the truest and best expression of 
 what is noblest in the Roman Catholic Church. 
 Sung in unison by the congregation, in a slow 
 and dignified style, the organ carried, as it still 
 carries, the harmonies, and from that day to this 
 the Lutheran Choral has served as a basis for 
 elaborate contrapuntal writing, as the Gregorian 
 melodies did in Italy in the days of the Netherland- 
 ers and of Palestrina. At the end of the sixteenth 
 century, then, the Lutheran Choral was supreme 
 
 The Lutherai 
 Choral.
 
 54 
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 LESSON VII. 
 
 Franc*. 
 
 What ire owe 
 Ui Italy. 
 
 in the Religious music of Protestant Germany, as 
 the developed and ennobled Gregorian chant was 
 in that of Italy and of Catholic Europe. But, 
 unlike Catholic Church music, the Lutheran 
 Choral had not yet revealed its full possibilities. 
 Protestant Church music was not to culminate 
 until about a hundred and fifty years after 
 Palestrina. It was Sebastian Bach who first 
 showed what could be done with the Lutheran 
 Choral in the way of Art-music, leaving behind 
 him in his motets, and especially in his Passion 
 music, models not only unsurpassed but unsur- 
 passable the admiration and the despair of all 
 later composers. 
 
 Spain contributed a few able composers to the 
 age of Palestrina, the best known are Christoforo 
 Morales, admitted in the Sistine choir in Rome in 
 1540, and Tomaso Ludovico Vittoria (1560-1608). 
 But no music of historic importance originated in 
 that country. 
 
 To France, also, we look in vain for an original 
 contribution to musical history at this epoch, 
 unless we count the French-speaking Belgians 
 (Netherlanders), such as Dufay, Josquin de Pres, 
 Clement ("non Papa"), Jaques Arcadeldt and 
 Claude le Jeune, as French. Italy was the great 
 intellectual and artistic centre. We owe to her 
 the great age of Painting, the Revival of Letters, 
 the development of Singing, and of Gregorian 
 Church Music, the invention of the Opera and of 
 Oratorio. In great part, also, we owe to her the 
 development of polyphony. For, although this 
 movement was started and carried on by Northern 
 foreigners, it was in Italy that they found their 
 public and their proper field of labor, and it was 
 in Palestrina, an Italian, that their work found 
 its culmination.
 
 ADVANCE OF INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC. 
 
 To Italy, too, we owe the highest development LE880 - N vri - 
 of instrumental music at this epoch. Naturally 
 enough, this development came first in the do- 
 main of organ music. As sacred music preceded 
 secular as an art development, so the organ, 
 used to accompany the music of the church, be- 
 came fit for artistic purposes sooner than did any i 
 other instrument. 
 
 The progenitor of the organ was the Syrinx, or 
 Pan's pipes, a series of reeds placed side by side f theor s an - 
 and blown by the mouth. When a bellows was 
 invented, in the shape of a bag, to be placed under 
 the arm, and the syrinx became a bagpipe, a step 
 had been taken toward the organ as we know it. 
 The next step was to place the pipes on a box, 
 and let the wind into the box from a weighted 
 bellows. Such organs were in use among the 
 Greeks two hundred years before the Christian 
 era. 
 
 The first organs of this sort in use in Christen- 
 dom of which we have any accurate knowledge 
 were in the eighth century, though there are said to 
 have been some in Spain in the fifth century, and 
 in Rome in the seventh. They were small, of 
 only one or two octaves, having from eight to 
 fifteen pipes. There was no key-board at that 
 time. There was a slide under each pipe, which 
 was drawn out to make the pipe speak and pushed 
 in to stop it. Only melodies were played, and 
 the player had to use both hands, pushing in one 
 slide when he drew out another. In the ninth 
 century many such organs were made in France 
 and in Germany, the largest of them having 
 their longest pipes four feet long. In some of 
 them, the slides were operated by upright levers, 
 marked with the letters A, B, C, etc., indicating 
 the pitch of the pipes. By the end of the tenth 
 
 First European 
 
 organs.
 
 56 
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 LESSON VII. 
 
 Winchester 
 organ. 
 
 Improvements 
 in the organ 
 about 1100. 
 
 century organs had increased a good deal in size. 
 The famous organ in Winchester cathedral, 
 England, had four hundred pipes. It had two 
 sets of slides, twenty in each set, with ten pipes 
 to each slide, and required two players. Mr. E. 
 J. Hopkins, in his excellent article on the organ, 
 in Grove's " Dictionary of Music and Musicians," 
 says that this organ had three sets of slides and re- 
 quired three players, a principal organist and two 
 assistants. This organ was built in 980. 
 
 The next important step in the construction of 
 organs was not taken until about a century later. 
 It consisted in doing away with the slides and 
 replacing them by keys. These keys kept the 
 pipes closed automatically by means of springs, so 
 that each pipe sounded only when its key was 
 pressed down. Thus the labor of pushing in slides 
 to stop the tone was all saved. But in the larger 
 organs, where there were a number of pipes to each 
 key, this action, though simple, was very clumsy 
 and cumbersome. A key long enough to close 
 ten or more pipes had to be pressed down several 
 inches, sometimes even a foot, and required a very 
 powerful spring. This made a very hard action. 
 As late as the fourteenth century, organ keys 
 were from three to four inches wide and had to be 
 pressed down with the fists or elbows. 
 
 Pedals were invented, probably, about 1300, 
 although we know very little about them until 
 their introduction into Venice by " Bernhard the 
 German, " about 1445. Reed pipes were intro- 
 duced about the fifteenth century. 
 
 The mechanism of the organ was gradually im- 
 proved until, by the end of the sixteenth century, 
 there were numerous organs with two or three 
 manuals and a full set of pedals, the action of 
 which was practicable for polyphonic playing.
 
 ADVANCE OF INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC. 
 
 57 
 
 Toward the end of the century independent 
 pieces for the organ began to be written. Venice 
 seems to have been the earliest centre for the pro- 
 duction of organ music. Especially from the 
 year 1566 on there was a great development of 
 organ playing and organ music there, especially in 
 St. Mark's Cathedral. In that year Claudio Merulo 
 became organist of the first of the two organs in 
 that church, and Andreas Gabrieli took his place at 
 the second organ, a position which Merulo had 
 held since 1557. They were both excellent musi- 
 cians, composers and organists. Merulo was suc- 
 ceeded at the first organ by Giovanni Gabrieli, who 
 continued in this position from 1584 till his death 
 in 1612. Both these men contributed much to 
 the development of independent organ music. 
 Merulo, particularly, devoted himself to the 
 composition of pieces for his instrument, while 
 Gabrieli divided his activity as a composer be- 
 tween organ music and church music. Many 
 young Germans came to Venice to study the organ 
 with the two Gabrielis, among them such noted 
 men as Hans Leo Hasler (1564-1618) and Hein- 
 rich Schutz (1585-1672). With Hasler began 
 that movement of German students of music toward 
 Italy which lasted about two hundred years. He 
 went to Venice in 1584 to study with Andreas 
 Gabrieli, and was on terms of intimate friendship 
 with Giovanni Gabrieli. Up to this time, for 
 about two hundred years, the Netherlander had 
 been the great educators in music, but, instead of 
 establishing one or more musical centres in their 
 own country, they had scattered and settled in 
 Italy, Germany, France and Spain. Their labors 
 had, as we have seen, borne such fruit in Italy 
 that the predominant influence in musical culture 
 had now become Italian. Hasler, and other young 
 
 LESSON VII. 
 
 Early organ 
 music in Venice. 
 
 German stu- 
 dents in Venice.
 
 58 
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 LESSON VII. 
 
 The Harpti- 
 shord and 
 Clavichord. 
 
 foreigners who studied in Italy, transplanted 
 Italian ideas and Italian style to their own 
 lands, and helped to make Italian musical influ- 
 ence supreme all over Europe. Schiitz studied 
 with Giovanni Gabrieli from 1609 until his death 
 in 1612. We shall have more to say of him in a, 
 subsequent lesson. 
 
 By the end of the sixteenth century the two 
 precursors of the piano-forte, the Harpsichord and 
 the Clavichord, had become pretty well developed, 
 and some independent music was written for them 
 also. The Clavichord is supposed to have been 
 developed from the monochord, an instrument 
 which reaches back into unknown antiquity. 
 This instrument, as its name indicates, had only a 
 single string. It had a movable bridge, by means 
 of which the intervals of the scale could be given, 
 the player moving the bridge with one hand while 
 he plucked the string with the other. It was used 
 mainly for teaching the rudiments of music. 
 Some time after the organ key -board was invented, 
 the monochord was provided with keys, each one 
 applying a bridge to- a different place in the 
 string, corresponding to the intervals of the scale. 
 Other strings were afterward added, and the brass 
 wedges, or "tangents," as they were called, on 
 the ends of the keys, not only divided the strings 
 into parts, but produced the tone by setting the 
 strings in vibration. The clavichord in this shape 
 was simply an oblong box, placed before the per- 
 former on a table, the strings running right and 
 left. The right hand manipulated the keys, 
 while the left probably damped the short portion 
 of the strings to the left of the tangents. It was 
 always a favorite instrument in Germany, because 
 some variation of power was possible, and because 
 of the tremulous effect (" Bebung ") which could
 
 ADVANCE OF INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC. 
 
 59 
 
 be produced by a peculiar touch on the key, the 
 tangent being held against the string. 
 
 The Harpsichord (clavicembalo), and its smaller 
 varieties, the Spinet and the Virginal, were prob- 
 ably developed from the Psaltery and, perhaps, 
 the Dulcimer (Hackbrett). These were simply 
 triangular or oblong harps, laid on their sides. 
 The Psaltery was played with a plectrum, and the 
 Dulcimer with small mallets or hammers. From 
 this last, probably, came the idea of our modern 
 piano-forte. The harpsichord, in its developed 
 form, had thin metallic strings, set in vibration 
 by means of stiff quills set horizontally in perpen- 
 dicular "jacks " fastened to the ends of the keys. 
 Thus they operated like the ancient plectrum in 
 playing the psaltery and zither. A good deal of 
 music used to be written " for the organ or harpsi- 
 chord," and the latter instrument was used where 
 the larger organ was not accessible at choir re- 
 hearsals and in private houses. Tallis, Byrd and 
 other English composers of the Elizabethan era 
 wrote much for the spinet and virginal, and the 
 virgin queen herself is said to have been no mean 
 performer. The harpsichord took the leading 
 place in the early orchestras and was played by 
 the conductor, as we shall see in the succeeding 
 lessons. 
 
 The Orchestra was exceedingly primitive at the 
 end of the sixteenth century. The guitar family 
 was very numerous and very popular had been 
 so, in fact, since the Crusades, when the German 
 Minnesingers, the Provenyal Troubadours and the 
 wandering Jongleurs, or Minstrels, began to use 
 them in accompanying their songs. To this class 
 belonged various sizes and types of the Lute, one 
 of them being called the Theorbo, the Cithara, the 
 Mandolin, etc. The latter instrument, in various 
 
 LESSON VII. 
 
 Development of 
 the Harpsi- 
 chord. 
 
 The early 
 orchestra.
 
 60 
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 LESSON VII. 
 
 Stringed instru- 
 ment*. 
 
 Woodwind 
 instrument*. 
 
 Reed instru- 
 mtnt'i. 
 
 sizes and types, remains in use in Spain and in 
 Mexico to the present day. The ancient Keltic 
 bards used harps and a stringed instrument called 
 Growth or Crowd. This was played with a bow, 
 and is the earliest European instrument of this 
 class. The violin class of instruments was much 
 more numerously represented in the sixteenth 
 century than now. So long as instruments were 
 used merely for accompanying voices, the guitar 
 family, lutes, etc., retained their predominant 
 popularity. It was not till after the rise of purely 
 instrumental music in the seventeenth century 
 that this class of instruments began to fall into 
 disuse on account of their lack of capacity for de- 
 velopment into solo instruments. Then the violin 
 family began to come into prominence, those of 
 inferior artistic capacity were gradually weeded 
 out, and the violin, viola, violoncello and double- 
 bass were finally left as the most available repre- 
 sentatives of their once numerous family. 
 
 The wood wind instruments were well repre- 
 sented. The Flute is very ancient and existed in 
 two forms, the Side-fluie (Flauto traverso}, similar 
 to our own, and the Flute a-bec or Beak-flute, 
 blown from the end. The modern flageolet and 
 the common whistle are really beak-flutes. One 
 kind of beak-flute or flageolet was called a Re- 
 corder. There were recorders of various sizes, 
 ranging from one to three feet in length. There 
 was also a long, bow-shaped, tapering flute called 
 a Cornet. The early orchestral Flute-a-bec had a 
 mouth-piece resembling the beak of a bird, and 
 this gave it its name. The ancients had double 
 flutes blown from the end. 
 
 The Oboe (or hautboy) is one of the oldest reed 
 instruments. Oboes used to be called " waits " or 
 " weyghtes" They were also of different sizes.
 
 ADVANCE OF INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC. 
 
 61 
 
 There was a large bass oboe called Bombard. 
 Our present large oboe is called an English Horn 
 (Cor Anglais, or Corno Inglese). The bass oboe of 
 the present is called a Bassoon or Fagotto. The 
 latter name is the same as Fagot, and comes from 
 the fact that the long tube is doubled on itself 
 repeatedly, like a bundle of sticks. 
 
 Brass instruments had been in use from very 
 ancient times. In the sixteenth century there 
 were Horns, Trumpets and Trombones (or Sackbuts~) 
 in use. Drums of various kinds, including the 
 kettle-drum, were also in use as military instru- 
 ments. 
 
 As yet (1600) there was little or no independent 
 music for any of these instruments. They were 
 used merely as accompaniments for vocal music. 
 For example, Giovanni Gabrieli used two violins, 
 two cornets and four trombones in the accompani- 
 ment of one of his church compositions, written 
 for only three voices, and in another piece, for 
 two choirs, he used one violin, three cornets and 
 two trombones. The first oratorio, by Cavaliere, 
 used an orchestra consisting of a harpsichord, a 
 double lyre, a theorbo (double guitar) and two 
 flutes. Similar orchestras were used in the first 
 operas. There was commonly, perhaps always, 
 a harpsichord or spinet, one or two flutes, and one 
 or two instruments each of the violin and lute 
 family. 
 
 The general situation, then, as regarded all our 
 modern forms of musical art, shows that they 
 were all in their infancy. Polyphonic choral 
 singing had attained a high pitch of perfection. 
 Solo singing was yet to be developed, to meet the 
 demands of the opera. Instrumental solo per- 
 formances were hardly thought of. The orchestra 
 was barely beginning the first experiments in the 
 
 LESSON VII. 
 
 Brass inslru- 
 mentt. 
 
 Early orches- 
 tra*. 
 
 Summary.
 
 62 
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 LESSON VII. 
 
 combination of instruments. The organ alone 
 was starting on its independent career as a solo 
 instrument, followed, at some little distance, by 
 the harpsichord and the clavichord. All the great 
 departments of the art of music were to be de- 
 veloped separately and in combination. How 
 much of this was done in the century to the 
 threshold of which we have now come, we shall 
 presently see.
 
 ADVANCE OF INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC. 
 
 63 
 
 QUESTIONS. 
 
 About what time did Italian supremacy in music begin? 
 
 Compare the condition of musical matters in Italy, 
 England, Germany, France and Spain about the year 
 1600. 
 
 What great factors in modern intellectual life do we 
 owe to Italy? 
 
 What was the earliest precursor of the organ ? 
 
 Describe the first European organs. 
 
 Describe the Winchester Cathedral organ. 
 
 What great improvement was made in the action of 
 the organ about 1100? 
 
 Describe the organ actions of the 12th and 13th cen- 
 turies. 
 
 When were pedals invented? 
 
 When reed pipes? 
 
 Name some of the great Venetian organists of the 
 latter part of the 16th century. 
 
 Name Germans who studied in Venice. 
 
 Describe the Harpsichord and the Clavichord, and 
 give their origin. 
 
 What kind of orchestra was used to accompany the 
 early operas and oratorios ? 
 
 What 'is the difference between a flute-a-bec and a 
 flauto traverso ? 
 
 What were Recorders? 
 
 Bombards? 
 
 Cornets? 
 
 How many different classes of instruments are men- 
 tioned as in use in the 16th century? 
 
 Mention some of those belonging to the guitar family. 
 
 LESSON VII
 
 LESSO.V VIII. 
 
 Italian opera. 
 
 Itt development 
 in Venice. 
 
 LESSON VIII. 
 
 THE PKOGRESS OF OPERA. 
 
 HAVING now given a general outline of the mu- 
 sical situation at the end of the sixteenth century, 
 our next task must be to trace the development of 
 musical art, along its various lines during the 
 seventeenth century, up to the beginning of the 
 life-work of Bach and Haendel. 
 
 Dramatic music will claim our attention first, 
 as the most important musical phenomenon of the 
 early part of the century. Opera, as we have 
 seen, was invented in Florence. But while the 
 Florentine musicians zealously cultivated the new 
 form of musical art, it was in Venice that the 
 most important development of the opera took 
 place during the early part of the seventeenth 
 century. The conditions in Venice were particu- 
 larly favorable for the development of secular and 
 especially of dramatic music. Venice was an iso- 
 lated, wealthy, commercial republic. She had 
 suffered less than any other Italian city from the 
 political confusion of the time ; her wealth gave 
 her citizens leisure for mental cultivation; her 
 commercial intercourse with the Orient had broad- 
 ened her ideas, introduced new elements of culture, 
 and made her more a cosmopolitan city than any 
 other in Europe. Then she had a great school of 
 first-class musicians who were already attracting 
 disciples from the north side of the Alps. These 
 musicians were independent, original and pro- 
 gressive. Zarlino had discovered important prin- 
 ciples in harmony, the value of which is only, in 
 our own day, beginning to be appreciated. The 
 64
 
 THE PROGRESS OF OPERA. 
 
 65 
 
 two Gabrielis, and, for that matter, all the com- 
 posers of the Venetian school from Willaert 
 down, had given their church music and madri- 
 gals a more dramatic coloring and a freer emo- 
 tional and imaginative treatment than anybody 
 else. The immediate successor of the Gabrielis 
 was to render the infant opera its greatest service. 
 This was Claudio Monteverde. He was born at 
 Cremona in 1568, and was director of music at 
 St. Mark's for thirty years, from 1613 till his 
 death, in 1643. From the beginning of his career 
 as a musician, before he went to Venice, he had 
 striven to make his compositions as expressive as 
 possible. With him the vivid expression of feel- 
 ing was the first aim of composition. To this end 
 he used without hesitation means unknown to or 
 forbidden by the theorists of his time. He was 
 the first to use the dominant-seventh without prep- 
 aration. He used the ninth, and even the aug- 
 mented fourth, in the same way, and he was the 
 first composer to use the diminished seventh 
 chord. As in the case of every composer of orig- 
 inal genius, Monteverde's innovations met with 
 severe criticism and violent opposition from the 
 pedantic theorists of his day. But they have been 
 accepted and incorporated into all our modern 
 music-thinking. So has one of his innovations in 
 the use of the violin. He was the first to employ 
 the tremolo, now in common use, as a means of 
 expressing agitated, passionate feeling. This, also, 
 was treated by many of his contemporaries with 
 ridicule and contempt, but the result has shown 
 that Monteverde was right. 
 
 Active as he was in employing all the harmonic 
 and orchestral resources of his time, and in invent- 
 ing new ones for the purpose of dramatic expression, 
 he was just the man to do for the newly-invented 
 5 
 
 LESSON VIII. 
 
 Monteverde, 
 1568-1643. 
 
 Hit innovation*.
 
 66 
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 LESSON VIII. 
 
 Fint public 
 opera home 
 built in Venice. 
 
 Oavalli, 1599- 
 1670. 
 
 opera what nobody else could. In 1607 he pro- 
 duced his first opera in Mantua, where he was then 
 director of music, and he wrote at least two more 
 before he went to Venice. In the latter city he 
 continued his career as an operatic composer. 
 In these works he embodied his ripest ideas 
 on the art of composition and of musical expres- 
 sion, and his work marks an era in musical 
 history. 
 
 It was doubtless due, in great part, to the stimu- 
 lus of his example that operatic composition was 
 so widely and so successfully cultivated in Venice. 
 During his time the first public opera house was 
 built in Venice. This was an epoch-making 
 event, for it marks the beginning of opera as a 
 public entertainment, whereas elsewhere it con- 
 tinued to be, for a long time, exclusively the prop- 
 erty of princes and nobles, who used it on festal 
 occasions for the entertainment of their guests. In 
 Venice it was a popular matter, not a court affair. 
 So popular was it that other opera houses were 
 built, and before the year 1734 some/ottr hundred 
 operas by forty different composers had been pub- 
 licly performed in Venice ! This date takes us 
 somewhat beyond the boundaries set for the pres- 
 ent lesson, but it seemed necessary to make the 
 statement. One more brief remark, and we have 
 done with Venice for the present. Cavalli, who 
 became Monteverde's successor at St. Mark s in 
 1668, must be mentioned as the one Venetian 
 composer, after Monteverde, who contributed essen- 
 tially to the development of the dramatic style. 
 He won a reputation which extended far beyond 
 the bounds of Italy. After his time, opera in 
 Venice began to emphasize the sensuous rather 
 than the dramatic element, and with this change 
 began its degeneration and downfall.
 
 THE PROGRESS OF OPERA. 
 
 67 
 
 The newly-invented opera, or newly-revived 
 Greek drama, as it was then supposed to be, was 
 speedily introduced into Germany. The first 
 German to do this was Heinrich Schutz (1585- 
 1672), referred to in the last lesson as a student 
 under Gabrieli in Venice. It happened in this 
 way : In the year 1627 the Elector John George 
 I of Saxony gave his daughter in marriage to the 
 Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt. As the latter was 
 a highly-educated and cultivated man, the elector 
 wished to offer him some entertainment worthy of 
 his intellectual and refined tastes. So it occurred 
 to him to give a performance of Peri's first opera, 
 " Dafne." He ordered Schutz, his court director 
 of music, to prepare it and give it in the German 
 language, designating Martin Opitz, the poet, as the 
 translator of Rinuccini's text. But when the trans- 
 lation was made, it would not fit Peri's music. So 
 Schutz himself set the German words to music 
 and composed the first opera ever written in Ger- 
 many. Although written by a German, it was, to 
 all intents and purposes, an Italian opera ; for 
 Schutz was in full sympathy with the Italian ideas 
 he had imbibed in Venice. A long time was to 
 elapse before German opera composers were to 
 develop a national style. One reason of this was 
 the political and social confusion caused by the 
 dreadful thirty years' war (1618-1648), which 
 effectually prevented Schutz from following up his 
 first attempt in this line. He never wrote a second 
 opera. 
 
 In 1662 an Italian opera house was established 
 in Dresden, with an Italian conductor and Italian 
 singers, and here Italian operas were given in the 
 Italian language, under court patronage, until 
 about the end of the first quarter of the nineteenth 
 century. What was true of Dresden was true of 
 
 LESSON VIII. 
 
 Italian opera 
 outside of Italy. 
 
 H. SchUtz, 
 1585-1672. 
 
 His first opera 
 the first written 
 in Germany. 
 
 Italian opera 
 established in 
 Dresden, 1662.
 
 68 
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 LESSON VIII. 
 
 English opera 
 composers of 
 (hit period. 
 
 Hamburg; her 
 character and 
 musical life. 
 
 nearly or quite every court in Germany. If Ger- 
 man composers were employed, they had to write 
 music in the Italian style to Italian words. In 
 short, Italian opera became the fashion, and, as in 
 the case of most fashionable things, so long as 
 the craze lasted, no other style, however meritori- 
 ous, had any chance of success. In England, also, 
 Italian opera because the fashion. The one Eng- 
 lish composer acknowledged as of first rank dur- 
 ing this century was Henry Purcell (1658-1695). 
 He wrote a very considerable number of operas, 
 but they were in no way distinguishable, as regards 
 style, from the contemporary Italian operas on 
 which they were modeled. Two other English 
 opera composers of this century achieved a good 
 reputation in their own country, Matthew Lock 
 (1620-1677), and John Eccles, born about the 
 same time as Lock. 
 
 In Germany, Hamburg formed an exception to 
 the prevalent Italian style. This grew out of the 
 fact that Hamburg was a free commercial city, 
 and also, being far removed from the scene of 
 the thirty years' war, had suffered less than 
 her neighbors. These two circumstances, as in 
 the case of Venice, enabled her to develop an indi- 
 vidual life of her own, and caused her music to 
 take on a peculiar character, different from that 
 of the rest of Germany. Here, as in Venice, 
 church music was greatly influenced by the dra- 
 matic style, and the opera, very naturally, was 
 from the start more characteristically German 
 than Italian. However, no real development of 
 German opera came out of this promising begin- 
 ning. Unfortunately, the writers of opera texts 
 there, as elsewhere, seemed unable to choose any 
 other than classical subjects, and as the masses 
 who patronized the opera had no sympathy with
 
 THE PROGRESS OF OPERA. 
 
 69 
 
 Greek mythology, and no acquaintance with the 
 Greek literature from which these subjects were 
 taken, they cared nothing at all for that kind of 
 musical drama. There was no court to support 
 the opera ; success depended on attracting full 
 houses, necessarily made up, in great part, of un- 
 cultivated people ; and so the managers resorted 
 to spectacular attractions and depended for their 
 patronage mainly on scenic accessories. Of course, 
 this was fatal to the development and realization 
 of all high artistic ideals, and opera here, as later 
 in Venice, degenerated. Decay set in, in fact, 
 not only before operatic endeavor had borne any 
 ripe fruit, but almost before there had begun to be 
 any fruit at all. A considerable improvement 
 took place, however, at the end of the century, 
 the results of which we shall trace in the next 
 lesson. 
 
 Italian opera made its first appearance in 
 France in the year 1645, when Cardinal Mazarin 
 procured a company of Italian opera singers for 
 the entertainment of the queen, Anne of Austria. 
 It is said, however, that opera, as performed by 
 this company, failed to meet the demands of French 
 taste. The French applied to it the canons of the 
 drama as it had been developed by their great 
 classical dramatists, Corneille and Moliere, who 
 had already done much toward refining French 
 taste in dramatic art. Measured by these stand- 
 ards, the Italian opera of that time was faulty 
 and defective. Although it had originated in an 
 enthusiastic attempt to revive the Greek drama, 
 the tendency to develop its musical forms, and to 
 invent sensuously pleasing melodies at the cost of 
 dramatic truthfulness, had speedily shown itself. 
 Besides this, the Italian opera, as represented in 
 France, aimed to produce effects largely by means 
 
 LESSON VIII. 
 
 Why German 
 opera was not 
 developed there. 
 
 French opera. 
 
 Why Italian 
 opera Jailed to 
 please French 
 tastet.
 
 70 
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 LESSON VIII. 
 
 Obstacles in the 
 wni/ of French 
 opera. 
 
 Pen-in, 1620- 
 1675. 
 
 His lyric poems. 
 
 of decorations, scenic accessories, etc., instead of 
 depending mainly on a vivid and forcible dramatic 
 presentation of a well-constructed play. All this 
 hindered the success of Italian opera among the 
 cultivated classes in France much more than it 
 did in Germany, where the dramatic sense was 
 much less advanced, and where, indeed, the natu- 
 ral turn for the drama, and natural tact and per- 
 ception in dramatic matters, were far less marked 
 than among the French. 
 
 But the introduction of opera into France 
 created a desire among Frenchmen to produce a 
 musical drama of their own more in accord with 
 their dramatic ideals. The chief obstacle to this 
 was found to lie in the fact that French poetry, 
 as it then existed, was wholly unsuited to musical 
 treatment. There were at that time no free lyric 
 forms in the French literature, such as would 
 give a composer free scope for his imagination in 
 setting them to music; and the worst of it was, 
 that the iambic line of six feet, interrupted by a 
 csesura, unfit as it was for the purpose of an ope- 
 ratic composer, was considered by the poets and 
 critics of the day as the only poetic form worthy 
 of a place in literature. 
 
 The first man who had the courage to break 
 through this literary superstition, and to write 
 lyric verses suitable for music, in defiance of the 
 traditions of the elders, was the Abbe Perrin. He 
 first published a collection of poems, irregular in 
 form, freely adapting themselves to the varying 
 moods of the poet and avowedly intended to lend 
 themselves to the purposes of imaginative musical 
 composition. They were violently opposed, of 
 course, by the pedantic literary critics, and a& 
 violently defended on the side of the musicians, 
 who saw in them the possibility of a national lyric
 
 THE PROGRESS OF OPERA. 
 
 71 
 
 LES&ON VIII. 
 
 Cambert, 
 1628-1677. 
 
 Work of Perrir 
 and Cambert. 
 
 drama hitherto unattainable. A professional or- 
 ganist named Robert Cambert, at that time the 
 most prominent composer in France, soon set 
 some of his songs to music, and very soon after this 
 the two combined to produce a comic operetta msflrn 
 called " Pastorale." This was given for the first I opereUa - 
 time in the year 1659. It made a great success, 
 in spite of the fact that it was given purposely 
 without any of those splendid scenic accessories 
 which the Italian party in Paris was employing 
 to dazzle the eyes of the public. But as there 
 was, of course, there, as everywhere, a considerable 
 number of those who preferred tawdry glitter to 
 solid artistic qualities, the new French opera 
 did not make its way as rapidly as its friends de- 
 sired. However, Perrin and Cambert worked on 
 energetically, and in 1669 they obtained of King 
 Louis XIV the exclusive privilege for twelve 
 years of giving operas, not only in Paris but in 
 all the cities of France. They formed a stock 
 company and built an opera house, opening it 
 with a new opera of their own, " Pomona," which 
 ran for eight months and netted Perrin alone 
 about $6000. It is said, however, to have been 
 inferior in every way to their first work. Feeling 
 the necessity of competing with the Italian opera 
 in showy decorations, they laid more stress on 
 these than on the artistic quality of their new 
 work, and by these means achieved a great popu- 
 lar success. The consequence was that they ac- 
 complished very little for real French opera in the 
 four years during which they held their operatic 
 monopoly. Their real service lay in the decisive 
 first step of Perrin in the matter of lyric poetry, 
 and in the impulse given by their first combined 
 effort in opera. 
 
 We now come to one of the great names in the
 
 72 
 
 LESSON'S IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 LESSON VIII. 
 
 Lully, 1633- 
 1687 
 
 He buys the 
 opera monopoly 
 from Perrin 
 and Cambert, 
 1672. 
 
 Importance of 
 hit work. 
 
 history of French opera, and, for that matter, of 
 opera in general, the name of Giovanni Battista 
 Lully, who succeeded to the monopoly of opera in 
 France in the year 1672. For two hundred years, 
 now, it has been affirmed that he robbed Perrin 
 and Cambert of their privilege by means of the 
 basest intrigue. It has even been affirmed that 
 he poisoned ^Cambert, several years after he 
 cheated him out of his rights. He has always 
 been represented as a smart, shrewd, unscrupulous 
 courtier, who, coming to Paris as a youngster, 
 pushed his way up from a menial position in the 
 household of Mme. de Montpeusier, the king's 
 niece, to that of a special favorite of the king 
 himself. He is said to have used the power thus 
 acquired in the most odious way, treating the 
 noblest men of his time with contempt and con- 
 tumely, and filling his own pockets at the expense 
 of others. However this may be, late researches 
 in the French archives seem to make it clear that 
 he bought the opera monoply of Perrin and Cam- 
 bert instead of stealing it from them. 
 
 Whatever else may be doubtful, it is certain 
 that, although an Italian by birth, he succeeded 
 in doing for French national grand opera what 
 Perrin and Cambert had failed to do. Associating 
 himself with the poet Quinault, who wrote the 
 poems for his operas, he created, within the next 
 fifteen years (he died in 1687), a large number of 
 music dramas so vigorous in conception, so full of 
 powerful rhetorical declamation, so dramatically 
 truthful in short, so fully in accord with the 
 highest French ideals that they kept their place 
 on the stage for almost a whole century after his 
 death. Considered as music, his operas were infe- 
 rior to the more fully-developed Italian operas of 
 his time. 'Considered as dramas, they were greatly
 
 THE PROGRESS OF OPERA. 
 
 73 
 
 superior, and it was this that gave them their na- 
 tional character. They were real French opera, 
 not merely Italian opera transplanted into French 
 soil. At the end of the seventeenth century, then, 
 there were two styles of opera in Europe : 1. The 
 Italian, in Italy, Germany and England, charac- 
 terized by the predominance of the music over the 
 words and the dramatic action, laying chief stress 
 on the development of its musical forms and the 
 elaboration of its melodies. The first requisite of 
 the latter was that they must be pleasing and sing- 
 able. Dramatic truthfulness in them was, as it 
 still is in most Italian operas, quite a subordinate 
 matter. 2. The national French opera, based on 
 an ideal the exact reverse of that which controlled 
 Italian opera, laying chief stress on dramatic ex- 
 pression and relegating the music to a subordinate 
 position, wholly tributary to the main purpose of 
 the drama. 
 
 LESSON VIII 
 
 Characteristic 
 differences be- 
 tween French 
 and Italian 
 opera.
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 LESSON VIII. 
 
 QUESTIONS. 
 
 In what city was opera successfully cultivated during 
 the early part of the seventeenth century ? 
 
 What conditions there were favorable to it? 
 
 Who was the composer who did most for it ? 
 
 Give dates. 
 
 Mention some of his innovations. 
 
 What was the object of these innovations? 
 Give evidences of the flourishing condition of opera 
 in Venice. 
 
 What caused its decay ? 
 
 Name a second prominent Venetian opera composer. 
 
 Who introduced Italian opera into Germany ? 
 
 Give dates. 
 
 Where was this ? 
 
 When was Italian opera established in Dresden? 
 
 Was the state of things in Dresden different from that 
 in other court cities of Germany? 
 
 How long did it continue? 
 
 Name the prominent English composers of opera at 
 this time. 
 
 Give dates for Purcell. 
 
 Was their work essentially English or Italian in style? 
 
 Give an account of the course of opera in Hamburg. 
 
 When was Italian opera introduced into France ? 
 
 Why was it regarded as unsatisfactory? 
 
 What was the chief obstacle to the composition of 
 operas in the French language ? 
 
 Who overcame this obstacle, and how ? 
 
 Who wrote the first French opera? 
 
 Give date of its production. 
 
 Why was the success of Perrin and Cambert limited? 
 
 When did their monopoly of opera pass into other 
 bands? 
 
 Whose ? 
 
 What service did Lully render to French opera ? 
 
 Give an account of Lully, with dates. 
 
 Give the characteristic distinction between Italian and 
 French opera at this time.
 
 Oaritshai, 1586- 
 1673. 
 
 LESSON IX. LE8SO 
 
 MUSIC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 
 1. The Growth of the Oratorio and of the Cantata. 
 
 THE man who did for oratorio much the same 
 service that Monteverde did for opera was Giacomo 
 Carissimi (L 580-1 673; these dates are somewhat 
 doubtful). He is said to have been one of the 
 most active minded and progressive men of his 
 time. Most of the professional musicians had 
 been brought up in the traditions of polyphony, 
 and were strongly conservative in their feelings 
 and opinions. They were apt to look down on 
 the new attempts at monophonic music, whether 
 in drama, oratorio or church music, as mere 
 amateurish innovations, unworthy of educated mu- 
 sicians. So they treated all this phase of musical 
 activity, out of which so large a part of our modern 
 music has grown, with indifference or contempt. 
 
 Carissimi was of a different mind. He thought j He adopts an 
 there was a field for the dramatic style of solo 
 singing, and that it could be made more ex- 
 pressive and more effective than polyphony. He 
 was a professional musician and director of music 
 at one of the churches in Rome; but he devoted 
 many years of his life to the development of what 
 he called chamber cantatas, essentially the same 
 kind of works which we call cantatas nowadays. 
 They were, really, musical dramas Avithout action 
 or scenery. The music consisted, as it still con- 
 sists in our modern cantata and oratorio, of recita- 
 tives, arias, duets, trios, quartets and choruses, 
 the one or the other kind being employed accord- 
 ing to the dramatic requirements of the text. 
 75 
 
 monophome 
 style.
 
 76 
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 LESSON IX. 
 
 'Jnrfe'mf 
 
 recitatives. 
 
 Difference be- 
 tween the can- 
 tatu and the 
 oratorio. 
 
 Given without stage accessories, everything was 
 left to the imagination of the hearer. There was 
 no drawing off of the attention to subordinate 
 matters, no disturbance by stage incongruities or 
 inadequacies ; the imagination had free play, and 
 each hearer was edified in proportion to his own 
 imaginative power and to the dramatic sugges- 
 tiveness of the poem. But, as von Domrner has 
 well pointed out in his excellent history of music 
 (p. 295), the absence of the stage accessories and 
 of action made the demands on the composer all 
 the more severe. Where attention was concen- 
 trated on the music, defects in form or in euphony 
 and rhythm, or in dramatic expressiveness, were 
 all the more glaring and noticeable. 
 
 Carissimi set himself to a task which he deemed 
 worthy of all his powers. He sought to make 
 of the recitative a refined and forcible kind of 
 musical declamation, and to make it as expressive 
 as possible in a natural way, approximating im- 
 passioned declamatory speech. He sought to 
 make the aria beautiful in melody, perfect in 
 form and expressive in style. He strove for 
 noble simplicity, beauty and dramatic truthful- 
 ness in every portion of his work. In this he 
 succeeded, to the delight and edification of his 
 contemporaries. He made the cantata a real 
 art- work, based on genuine art-principles, and 
 laid down the lines on which it has been culti- 
 vated ever since. 
 
 Of course, such a service rendered to the 
 cantata was rendered equally to the oratorio, for 
 a cantata differs from an oratorio only in having 
 a secular rather than a sacred subject. An 
 oratorio is, to all intents and purposes, a sacred 
 cantata. If the latter term is ever used nowa- 
 days in distinction from the term oratorio, it
 
 MUSIC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 77 
 
 means either a work slighter and shorter than is 
 thought necessary for the name oratorio, or one 
 on a subject more or less related to religious life, 
 without having a scriptual text. Carissimi wrote 
 " Sacred Cantatas " or " Motettes," shorter than 
 oratorios, but he wrote oratorios also, on the same 
 general lines as his chamber cantatas (secular). 
 These works, like our modern oratorios, treated 
 scriptural subjects. "Jephtha," "David and 
 Jonathan," " Abraham and Isaac " were among 
 them. How many works of these different kinds 
 he wrote in the course of his long life is not 
 known. Most of them are lost. But enough 
 remain to show the quality of his work and to 
 give him a clear title to be called the " Father of 
 Cantata and of Oratorio." Besides, his work was 
 not only popular in his own day, but has exerted 
 a most extended and far-reaching influence from 
 that time to the present. From the time of 
 Carissimi the cantata and oratorio have been 
 favorite forms of composition, and there is no 
 prospect of any diminution of their popularity. 
 Every new composer tries his hand at one or 
 both, and new works in this field are produced 
 every year. All this vast and growing wealth of 
 secular and sacred dramatic music has grown out 
 of the work of Carissimi, has followed the lines 
 he laid down, and has adopted the forms he de- 
 veloped, elaborating them more or less, but, on 
 the whole, departing far less widely from his 
 models than might have been expected, considering 
 that more than two centuries have elapsed since 
 his death. His was an epoch-making activity, 
 and his work marks the beginning of a great 
 historical era, the end of which is not yet. 
 
 In Germany, Heinrich Schu'tz (1585-1672), 
 already mentioned, in the last lesson, as the com- 
 
 LESSO.V IX. 
 
 Odrissimi't 
 work and injfa 
 ence. 
 
 SchOlz, 1586- 
 1672.
 
 78 
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 ix. p 0ser O f t ne first German opera, composed several 
 works on the general lines of the oratorio, and so 
 rendered quite as great a service to this branch of 
 musical art in his native country as he did to 
 dramatic art in the introduction of opera. He 
 wrote The Passion, according to the four accounts 
 given in the gospels, The Story of the Resurrection, 
 and The Seven Last Words of the Redeemer. These 
 works were far less advanced in style than those 
 of Carissimi, but they served to lay the founda- 
 tions of German oratorio. The only other Ger- 
 man name to be mentioned here is a Prussian 
 music-director named Sebastiani, who wrote a 
 " Passion-music," given for the first time in 1672, 
 in which the congregational chorals were inter- 
 woven with the gospel narrative, the comments of 
 the believers and the bystanders, and the choruses 
 which represented the multitude. 
 
 As Italians were the first to introduce solo sing- 
 ing into dramatic music, both sacred and secular, 
 so it was an Italian who first introduced it into 
 church music proper. This was LudovicoViadana 
 introduce* (1565-1644). He lived some time in Rome, then 
 became director of music at the cathedral of Fano, 
 and afterward at that of Mantua. He wrote what 
 he called Church concertos (concerti da chiesa) ; 
 they consisted of solo pieces and duets, trios, etc., 
 for solo voices, with organ accompaniment. These 
 were written about the time mouophonic music for 
 dramatic purposes was invented in Florence. 
 Viadana eschewed the polyphonic style because 
 he believed that he could make the words much 
 better understood and give them truer expression 
 in the style he chose. It is the old story of the 
 revolt of the Camerata against the trammels of 
 polyphony, in the interest of musical expression 
 of feeling. Viadana had the true, sincere feeling 
 
 solo singing into 
 the church ser- 
 vice.
 
 MUSIC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 79 
 
 for art. He carefully avoided all display of vocal 
 attainments, aiming at a noble, dignified sim- 
 plicity. He demanded of his singers intelligence, 
 sincerity and true feeling. 
 
 His organ accompaniments embodied real har- 
 mony, as distinguished from counterpoint. He 
 wrote a continuous bass (basso continuo),a.nd with 
 chords, more or less full as occasion seemed to re- 
 quire. Up to this time, chords had been merely 
 the result of the combination of voice-parts in 
 polyphony. Now they began to be used inde- 
 pendently of any such combination. Viadana did 
 not indicate the chords by figures over his basses, 
 as Peri had done. But this speedily became a 
 common practice, even in cases of polyphonic 
 writing. 
 
 After the middle of the century the influence 
 of Viadana's work was more and more widely felt. 
 Church composers wrote motettes in his style, and 
 monophouic music began gradually to displace 
 polyphony in the church service. The best known 
 of the polyphonic church writers of this time is 
 Gregorio Allegri (1580-1652). A Miserere of his 
 is still performed on Good Friday in the Papal 
 Chapel. For a most admirable account of its 
 effects see Mendelssohn's " Letters from Italy and 
 Switzerland." 
 
 Vocal music had been specially cultivated 
 among the Italians from the very beginning of 
 church music in Italy. Italian voices were 
 superior to any other in Europe ; Italian singers 
 devoted special attention to beauty of tone and 
 excellence in vocal execution, and easily attained 
 a supremacy which even yet can hardly be dis- 
 puted. The church composers were usually, if 
 not always, singers. They knew how to write for 
 the voice, and they demanded of their singers the 
 
 LESSOM IX. 
 
 Viadano 1 ! 
 harmony. 
 
 Atlegri, 1580- 
 1052. 
 
 Vocal music in 
 Italy.
 
 80 
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 LESSON IX. 
 
 Discipline of 
 
 stui i>- at* of sing- 
 jii'l in It'll;/ in 
 the nth century. 
 
 ability to perform the best works they were able 
 to compose. 
 
 Of course, the introduction of solo singing in 
 the church service, in opera and oratorio greatly 
 stimulated vocal cultivation. How far this was 
 carried in the seventeenth century, and how great 
 were the demands of various kinds made on 
 singers, we may learn from the following para- 
 graph, translated from von Dommer's " History 
 of Music," (Chap. XVI, page 440). It refers to 
 the training of the singers for the Papal Chapel 
 in the time of Pope Urban VIII, about 1636. 
 
 " The pupils were obliged to practice difficult 
 passages one hour daily, in order to acquire a 
 good technic. Another hour they devoted to 
 the practice of the trill ; a third to correct and 
 pure intonation, all in the presence of their mas- 
 ter, and standing before a mirror, so as to observe 
 the position of the tongue and mouth, and to avoid 
 all grimaces in singing. Two more hours they 
 devoted to the study of expression and taste, and 
 of literature. This was the forenoon's work. In 
 the afternoon they devoted a half-hour to the 
 theory of sound, another to simple counterpoint, 
 an hour to composition, and the rest of the day to 
 harpsichord playing, the composition of a psalm 
 or motette, or some other work adapted to the 
 talent and inclination of the pupil. Sometimes 
 they sang in some of the other Roman churches, or 
 went there to hear the works of masters. When 
 they came home they had to give the master an 
 account of all they had experienced. They fre- 
 quently went out by the Porta angelica to Monte 
 Mario, to sing, where there was an echo, in order 
 to observe their own faults from its responses. 
 Such studies may well have produced results 
 which seem incredible to us. It is said of the
 
 MUSIC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 81 
 
 distinguished singer Baldasser Ferri, of Perugia 
 (1610-80), for the possession of whom the courts 
 of Europe competed, that he could sing a chain- 
 trill of two octaves in chromatic intervals up and 
 down in one breath, and this with absolute purity 
 of intonation. Besides this, he was quite as dis- 
 tinguished for characteristic variety of expres- 
 sion." 
 
 This may serve to show the condition of vocal 
 technic toward the latter part of the century. It 
 is quite probable that what was then regarded as 
 characteristic expressiveness in singing would 
 sound very crude to our ears. But as regards 
 mere vocal gymnastics, purity of intonation and 
 beauty of tone, the results then achieved Were 
 probably the limit of human capability. 
 
 LESSON IX.
 
 82 
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 LESSON IX. QUESTIONS. 
 
 i 
 
 Who was The Father of the Cantata and the Oratorio ? 
 
 Where did he live? 
 
 How did his ideals differ from those of most contempo- 
 rary musicians? 
 
 What is the difference between a cantata and an ora- 
 torio? 
 
 What traits have they in common ? 
 
 Of what elements do they consist? 
 
 What can you say of the influence of Carissimi's 
 work ? 
 
 Who wrote the first German oratorios ? 
 
 Name another German composer in this connection. 
 
 Give some account of Schlitz's work. 
 
 Who first wrote monophonic church music in Italy ? 
 
 Give an account of his work. 
 
 What is a basso continuo ? 
 
 Who was the best known composer of polyphonic 
 church music at this period? 
 
 What influences conduced to the development of solo 
 singing? 
 
 Give an account of the studies of young singers at this 
 period. 
 
 Give an instance of Ferri's attainments in vocal 
 technic.
 
 LESSON X. 
 
 MUSIC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 (Concluded.) 
 
 The Development of Instrumental Music. 
 
 THE crude orchestration of the early opera and 
 oratorio was referred to in the last lesson. But it 
 was a matter of course that, although solo sing- 
 ing naturally received the greater stimulus from 
 the neAV monophony, nevertheless the instrumental 
 portion of the operas, oratorios, chamber cantatas, 
 church concertos, etc., should share more or less in 
 this impulse, and should gradually be developed. 
 The attempt to give characteristic expression to 
 all portions of dramatic works led to a keener and 
 more refined perception of instrumental effects, 
 and so the art and science of orchestration was 
 gradually developed. The necessity of perfection 
 in details also led to the gradual development of 
 each individual class of instruments, the sifting 
 out of those kinds least available for the purposes 
 of dramatic expression, the further sifting of the 
 varieties within each class, and the survival of the 
 fittest. Thus, for example, the stringed instru- 
 ments played with a bow were of two general 
 orders : I. Knee violins (da Gamba), and II. Arm 
 violins {da Bracdo). In the first order there 
 were three kinds of bass and three of tenor viols. 
 In the second there were three kinds of violas and 
 four kinds of violins, three of them smaller than 
 ours. Thus there were thirteen different kinds of 
 instruments played with a bow. The sifting pro- 
 cess has reduced this number to four: violin, viola, 
 violoncello and double-bass. The wood-wind and 
 83 
 
 LESSON X. 
 
 Orchestral 
 music. 
 
 Instruments of 
 the violin class.
 
 84 
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 Lsssos X. 
 
 Lully's over- 
 ture*. 
 
 A. Scarlatti. 
 
 Chamber music. 
 
 Corelli. 
 1653-1713. 
 
 brass instruments also diminished in number by 
 the same process. 
 
 Side by side with this sifting went on the gradual 
 development of the individual instruments and of 
 solo playing. In the accompaniments of dra- 
 matic music, composers had to study the capacities 
 of each kind of instrument for characteristic ex- 
 pression and also its technical capabilities, and, 
 of course, both they and the players gained 
 knowledge and skill from experience. With the 
 improvement in individual playing came in- 
 creased freedom in writing, and the gradual de- 
 velopment of independent pieces for the orchestra. 
 Lully wrote overtures to his operas, which, though 
 short, were, nevertheless, in form, the germ of the 
 modern overture, sonata form and symphony. 
 They had a slow introduction, followed by a 
 lively minuet or a fugue. Alessandro Scarlatti, 
 whose work belongs partly to the next century, 
 and who will be mentioned further in the next 
 lesson, did a great deal for the development of 
 the orchestra. 
 
 Instrumental chamber music began to flourish 
 in the latter half of the seventeenth century. 
 The world owes the early development of this 
 branch of art also to Italy. " The father of the 
 true chamber music style and of real violin play- 
 ing," as von Dommer calls him (p. 456), was 
 Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713), the most renowned 
 violinist of his time. He is said to have produced 
 a pure, clear, even, beautiful tone; his style of 
 playing was characterized by a noble, dignified 
 simplicity and by profound musical feeling. He 
 composed a great deal for his instrument- 
 church sonatas, chamber sonatas, concertos and 
 sonatas for the violin associated with other in- 
 struments. They were short, but well defined in
 
 MUSIC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 85 
 
 form, rich in power of melodic invention, beauti- 
 fully lyric in style, refined and pure in harmony, 
 dignified, avoiding all display of what is now 
 called virtuosity. " Corelli set instrumental music 
 for the chamber, once for all, on the right path," 
 says von Dornmer. He was not distinguished for 
 great execution on his instrument; indeed, many 
 other violinists of his time surpassed him in this. 
 But the main features of his style, both as player 
 and composer, are models for all time, because 
 based on universal principles. His pupils, of 
 whom he had many, and successors only carried 
 out and developed what he had begun. 
 
 Corelli is said to have been a very modest, dif- 
 fident man, easily embarrassed and confused, so 
 much so that in the orchestra and in concerted 
 playing he frequently appeared at great disad- 
 vantage as compared with others who were in 
 most important respects greatly his inferiors. 
 
 The Venetian School of Organists was supreme 
 up to the early part of the seventeenth century. 
 The sceptre was then transferred to Rome. The 
 greatest organist of the first half of the century 
 was Girolamo Frescobaldi (1588-1653), called 
 " the father of the true organ style." His com- 
 plete works are still preserved. He wrote a great 
 many pieces for the organ and harpsichord, and 
 attained the highest reputation as organist of any 
 man of his time. People flocked to hear him 
 play, his admirers followed him from city to city, 
 and at his first public performance in Rome, 
 thirty thousand people are said to have crowded 
 to hear him ! Pupils came to him from all over 
 Europe, and he educated the best German organ- 
 ists of the next generation. He contributed much 
 to the development of the fugue style of organ 
 music which culminated in Sebastian Bach, and 
 
 LESSON X. 
 
 Organ music. 
 
 Frescnbaldi. 
 1588-1653.
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 LESSON X. 
 
 Stredinck, 
 1540-162) 
 
 Scheldt and 
 other distin- 
 guished German 
 
 organists. 
 
 Pasqtiini, 
 1637-1710. 
 
 marks the culminating point of Italian organ 
 From his time there was a gradual fall- 
 
 music 
 
 ing off, and supremacy in this field passed over 
 to Germany. 
 
 But it ought not to be forgotten that both Fres- 
 cobaldi and his German contemporaries owed 
 much to Netherland teaching. Frescobaldi spent 
 several years of his early life in Flanders, where 
 the organist of the principal church in Amster- 
 dam, Jan Plet&r Sweelinck (1540-1621), had a 
 great reputation, and taught a great many foreign 
 pupils, especially Germans Sweelinck, however, 
 had studied in Italy, having gone to Venice in 
 1557, where he was a pupil of Zarlino. He seems 
 to have been an exceptionally excellent teacher 
 as well as a great organist, and he educated a 
 large number of the best German organists, among 
 them Samuel Scheldt, of Halle (1587-1654), the 
 greatest German organist of his time ; Melchior 
 Schild, of Hanover ; Paul Syfert, of Danzig ; Jacob 
 Schultz and Heinrich Scheidemann, of Hamburg, 
 and Johann Adam Reinken (1623-1722), also 
 of Hamburg. Other renowned German organists 
 of this century were Johann Jacob Froberger 
 (1635-1695), Johann Caspar Kerl (1628-1693), 
 both pupils of Frescobaldi, Johann Pachelbel 
 (1653-1706), and Dietrich Buxtehude (1637- 
 1707). Sebastian Bach, when he was a lad in 
 the school at Luneburg, used to walk to Ham- 
 burg to hear Reinken, and made at least one trip 
 to Liibeck to hear Buxtehude. 
 
 Bernardo Pasquini (1637-1710) was, next to 
 Frescobaldi, the greatest Italian master of the 
 organ. He was, like his older contemporary, a 
 thorough musician, furnished with all the best 
 knowledge of his time, and highly respected not 
 only in Italy but in Germany. He also educated
 
 MUSIC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 87 
 
 many German musicians, and distinguished him- 
 self as a harpsichord player and as a dramatic 
 composer. 
 
 The harpsichord was an instrument so con- 
 venient for producing harmony and for poly- 
 phonic playing by a single performer that, al- 
 though its artistic capabilities were very limited, 
 it nevertheless grew into high favor among musi- 
 cians and amateurs. Its development kept pace 
 with that of the organ, and by the end of the 
 seventeenth century it had nearly or quite reached 
 the limit of its capacities. It had become quite 
 a large, elaborate instrument, with two keyboards. 
 These two manuals could be coupled together, the 
 upper one reinforcing the other by a separate set 
 of strings an octave higher, thus adding power 
 and brilliancy to the instrument. In this form it 
 was in common use, especially for concert pur- 
 poses and in the orchestra. The spinet or vir- 
 ginal, a small, square harpsichord, was much used 
 in small rooms, in convents and households. The 
 clavichord was used more by artists and less by 
 amateurs, for reasons given in a previous lesson. 
 
 Mastery of these" instruments was expected of 
 every professional musician as a matter of course. 
 Every organist was also a harpsichord player ; 
 music written for the organ was played on the 
 harpsichord, and vice versa. There was also some 
 writing of music specially adapted for the harpsi- 
 chord and clavichord. The numerous embellish- 
 ments of the harpsichord music of this and the 
 following century seem to have been not so much 
 mere imitations of vocal ornaments as attempts to 
 fill up the time of long notes on an instrument in- 
 capable of a sustained tone. The French excelled 
 at this time as harpsichord players. There was a 
 family named Couperin, at Paris, very distinguished 
 
 LESSON X. 
 
 Harpsichord 
 and clavichord 
 music.
 
 88 
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 LESSON X. 
 
 F. Couperin, 
 1668-1733. 
 
 J. P. Rameau. 
 
 Louis Mar- 
 
 chand. 
 
 1G69-1732. 
 
 Summary. 
 
 both as organists and harpsichordists for more 
 than a century. Francois (1668-1733) had the 
 highest reputation for the elegance, refinement and 
 tastefulness of his harpsichord music. His works 
 and performances did much to establish French 
 taste in this field all over Europe. 
 
 J. P. Rameau, to be mentioned later as a French 
 opera composer and an epoch-making theorist, 
 wrote fine harpsichord music, and Louis Marchand 
 (1669-1732) was an extremely brilliant player of 
 this instrument as well as an excellent organist. 
 In Italy, Frescobaldi and Pasquini were excellent 
 harpsichordists; so was Alessandro Scarlatti ; and, 
 in general, organists and musicians made it a point 
 to master the harpsichord. The German organists 
 mentioned above were all good harpsichord play- 
 ers, some of them very distinguished. 
 
 At the end of the seventeenth century the status 
 of instrumental music was this : The violin family 
 had been reduced, by a process of natural selection, 
 to nearly its present limits and the art of violin 
 making had been brought to perfection. All 
 through this century the Amati family, and later 
 the Guarneri and Stradivari families, in Cremona, 
 were making their famous instruments, never since 
 equaled and worth enormous sums to their pres- 
 ent possessors. 
 
 The lute family had come to occupy a decidedly 
 subordinate position. The incapacity for artistic 
 purposes of all instruments of the guitar type was 
 recognized and they have ever since been mostly 
 given over to peoples and individuals whose 
 musical taste is of a primitive, undeveloped char- 
 acter. 
 
 The wind instruments, both wood and brass, 
 were still undergoing the sifting process. The 
 combination of them into the groups of our mod-
 
 MUSIC IN- THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 89 
 
 ern orchestra had not yet been dreamed of, and 
 was not to come until nearly a century later. 
 
 The harpsichord and the clavichord had 
 reached the limit of their development and their 
 deficiencies were so generally felt that active 
 efforts were being made to improve them in the 
 direction of sustained tone and increase and 
 diminution of power. Out of these efforts came 
 the piano-forte, in the first decade of the next 
 century, an instrument which only partially meets 
 these demands. But the experiments which finally 
 resulted in the invention of our present instrument 
 were by no means the only ones. Attempts were 
 made to transform the harpsichord into an instru- 
 ment producing the same effect as if played with a 
 bow. In this instrument the pressing of each key 
 brought a resined wheel in contact with the string. 
 The wheels were kept rotating by machinery set 
 in motion by the foot. Other ideas looking toward 
 the improvement of the harpsichord were also 
 broached. As regards this instrument the attitude 
 of the musical world was one of eager desire and 
 expectation of radical improvement. The organ 
 was in condition to meet the fullest demands of 
 polyphonic playing and a vast deal of music in 
 this style was written for it by the organists of the 
 time. 
 
 Solo playing on all the instruments in use had 
 reached a high degree of perfection, both as re- 
 gards technical execution and grace, finish and 
 expressiveness of style. Concerted chamber music 
 was fairly under way and a good deal that was 
 valuable had already been accomplished. Out of 
 these elements the materials of the orchestra of the 
 future were shaping themselves. As for the actual 
 orchestra of the time, it had hardly emerged from 
 infancy. 
 
 LESSON X 
 
 Deficiencie* of 
 the harpsichord 
 and the cUtvi- 
 chord. 
 
 Attempt* to im- 
 prove t'teiu. 
 
 Solo playing.
 
 90 
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 LESSON X 
 
 QUESTIONS. 
 
 What motives operated to reduce the number of varie- 
 ties in each class of instruments?. 
 
 How did the development of the different kinds of 
 instruments and of solo playing come to pass? 
 
 How many kinds of stringed instruments played with a 
 bow were there? 
 
 How many are there now? 
 
 Into what two orders were they divided ? 
 
 Name two men who contributed to the early develop- 
 ment of orchestral music. 
 
 Who was "the father" of chamber music? 
 
 Tell what you know of him and his playing. 
 
 What great Italian organist was called " the father of 
 the true organ style? 1 ' Give some account of him. Who 
 was his teacher ? 
 
 Name some of the German pupils of this teacher. 
 
 Name some other great German organists of this time. 
 
 Name the second greatest Italian organist of this 
 century. 
 
 Describe the harpsichord of the end of this century. 
 
 Give an account of the state of harpsichord music. 
 
 Name some distinguished French harpsichord players. 
 German. Italian. 
 
 Who were the great Italian violin makers of this cen- 
 tury and in what city did they live? 
 
 What was the fate of the guitar (or lute) family of 
 instruments? 
 
 What was the condition of the wind instruments at the 
 end of the century? 
 
 Of the harpsichord and the clavichord? 
 
 Describe the attempts to improve the harpsichord. 
 
 How far was the organ developed ? 
 
 What was the condition of solo playing on all solo 
 instruments? 
 
 What was the condition of the orchestra ?
 
 LESSON XI. 
 
 ITALIAN OPERA FROM ALESSANDRO SCARLATTI TO 
 THE PRESENT. 
 
 ITALIAN OPERA, as we have seen, originated 
 in an attempt to revive the Greek Drama. As 
 music-drama, it involved music as one of its 
 principal elements; but the element of dramatic 
 representation ought to have been, and was, at 
 first, the predominant one. We have already 
 seen that the French, a nation pre-eminent in 
 dramatic taste and talent, retained this ideal 
 of opera after Italy had lost it. Opera in Italy 
 went from Florence to Venice, where it was 
 developed by Monteverde and others. Then 
 the seat of its supremacy was transferred to 
 Naples. In this city there was developed a 
 style of music, especially in opera, no less origi- 
 nal and influential than that of Venice. The 
 first great name in Neapolitan music is that of 
 Alessandro Scarlatti (1659-1725). He was a 
 pupil of the Roman school of Carissimi, and 
 was thoroughly educated in the style of church 
 music, oratorio and chamber music cultivated 
 by that distinguished master. His general 
 musical education was of the very best; he was 
 thoroughly trained in all the special branches 
 of his profession, and as singing teacher, con- 
 ductor, performer and composer in all styles, 
 he ranked among the first musicians of his 
 time. The Roman school of church music, of 
 which Palestrina had been and will always 
 remain the foremost representative, was char- 
 acterized by sublime elevation of style, by 
 
 91 
 
 Opera in 
 
 Venice and in 
 
 Kaptes. 
 
 Alessandro 
 Scarlatti, 
 1659-1725.
 
 92 
 
 LESSORS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 Charactfr 
 
 i.ttics of 
 
 Italian Opera. 
 
 noble and dignified simplicity. That of the 
 Neapolitan school, headed by Scarlatti, was 
 characterized mainly by sensuous charm and 
 beauty of melody. He was an incredibly pro- 
 lific composer. He is said to have written two 
 hundred masses, a very large number of motets, 
 psalms, concertos, etc., five hundred cantatas, 
 many madrigals, etc., and one hundred and 
 fourteen operas, besides a great deal of instru- 
 mental music. 
 
 In his hands the musical element of the 
 opera was predominant. Not that he did not 
 seek to fit his music, in a general way, to the 
 emotional character of the words and of the 
 situations of the drama; but he was concerned 
 still more with the perfecting of the musical 
 forms, and his arias and overtures served as 
 models for Haendel and for all composers of 
 Italian opera. His overtures resembled those 
 of Lully, and contained the germs of the modern 
 S3anphony. They were commonly in three 
 divisions, the middle part being slow and the 
 other two fast. After these overtures and 
 others written on their model began to be played 
 as separate orchestral pieces in concerts, the 
 three parts of the overture were gradually de- 
 veloped into three separate pieces, or "move- 
 ments," and became what is now called a 
 symphony. 
 
 From Scarlatti's day to our own the Italian 
 opera has laid prime stress on its melodies. 
 The first aim of Italian opera composers has 
 been to invent good singable, pleasing melodies, 
 well developed as regards musical form and 
 grateful for singers. The emotional character, 
 while not disregarded, has been a subordinate 
 matter, and no Italian writer has hesitated to
 
 ITALIAN OPERA. 
 
 93 
 
 stop the action of the drama in a critical situa- 
 tion in order to give a singer opportunity to 
 sing a long and elaborate aria, pleasing in 
 melody, perhaps sensational in character and 
 often full of technical difficulties, for the display 
 of the singer's attainments in vocalization. 
 
 For the rest, Scarlatti was as bold and 
 original in his treatment of harmony as was 
 Monteverde before him, and was treated in 
 much the same way. His innovations were 
 condemned by pedants and theorists, and imi- 
 tated by all the young generation of composers ; 
 so that his school became a model, and exercised 
 a most powerful influence, not only in Italy, 
 but in Germany, in England and even in France, 
 where Italian opera had a strong party of de- 
 fenders opposed to the national school. 
 
 Scarlatti's Italian pupils, Leonardo Leo (1694 
 -1746) and Francesco Durante (1684-1755) 
 were among the most distinguished of those 
 who helped to establish the supremacy of his 
 style ; Nicola Piccini (1 724-1 800), another Nea- 
 politan, carried it to France and competed 
 against Gluck with considerable success. 
 
 George Frederick Haendel (1685-1759) mod- 
 elled his operas on it, carried it to London and 
 produced numerous works for the English stage 
 for a period of about forty years; and numerous 
 pupils of Scarlatti, both native and foreign, 
 spread the ideas and traditions of the Nea- 
 politan school all over Em-ope. Other import- 
 ant Neapolitan composers of the time immedi- 
 ately succeeding Scarlatti were his son, Do- 
 menico Scarlatti (1683-1757), Francesco Feo 
 (born 1699), Nicolo Porpora (born 1685), Gio- 
 vanni Battista Pergolesi (1710-1737), almost 
 the first to write comic opera; Leonardo Vinci 
 
 Scarlatti's 
 influence. 
 
 His pupils. 
 
 JIaendel, 
 l85 1759. 
 
 Important 
 
 Neapolitan 
 
 comnoserx 
 
 after Scarlatti
 
 94 
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 1690-1734) and Nicolo Jomelli (1714-1774). 
 Antonio Sacchini (1734-1786) did most of his 
 ife-work as an opera composer in Paris; Gio- 
 vanni Paisiello (1741-1815) wrote for most 
 of the Italian stages and even for that of St. 
 Petersburg, and was a favorite in German}-. 
 Dominico Gimarosa (1749-1801) was one of 
 he greatest Neapolitans. He wrote seventy 
 operas, and his // Matrimonio Segreto, written 
 ? or Yienna, was one of the greatest operas of 
 ts time. 
 
 After Alessandro Scarlatti, and even partty 
 
 ;ontemporary with him, there were Italian 
 
 jomposers in Rome, Bologna and Yenice, who 
 
 were second in ability and reputation to him 
 
 alone. But there was no school of operatic 
 
 omposition which can be discriminated from 
 
 the Neapolitan in fundamental principles. His 
 
 successors equally devoted themselves mainly 
 
 to the musical side of the opera, neglecting the 
 
 dramatic element, broadening and perfecting 
 
 Scarlatti's musical forms, and making the Aria 
 
 the principal element of the opera. In Rome, 
 
 one of the most renowned masters was Giuseppe 
 
 Pitoni (1657-1743). Another was Francesco 
 
 Gasparini (1660-1737), and still another was 
 
 Agastino Steffani (1655-1730), part of whose 
 
 life was spent in Hanover. In Yenice the 
 
 greatest name was Antonio Lotti (1667-1737). 
 
 Of other Yenetians, Antonio Gaidar a (1670- 
 
 1736), Benedetto Marcello (1686-1739) and 
 
 Baldassare Galuppi (1706-1785) had great 
 
 reputation. Of similar rank were Giovanni 
 
 Bononcini (1670-1750), for some time a rival 
 
 of Handel's in London, and Emanuale Astorga 
 
 (1681-1736). In Germany, besides Haendel, 
 
 most of whose -writing was, however, for the 
 
 Roman and 
 Venetian 
 composers.
 
 ITALIAN OPERA. 
 
 95 
 
 London stage, there were numerous celebrated 
 composers of Italian opera on the model of 
 Scarlatti. In Vienna the greatest name before 
 Mozart, who also wrote Italian opera, but modi- 
 fied, and who holds a unique position, was 
 Johann Joseph Fux (1660-1732), renowned not 
 only as composer, but as conductor and the- 
 orist; his Gradus ad Parnassian was for a long 
 time the standard text-book in counterpoint. 
 In Berlin, Carl Eeinrich Graun (1701-1759) 
 was the leading name ; in Munich, Johann 
 Caspar Kerl (1628-1693) ; in Dresden, Johann 
 Adolph Hasse (1699-1783). In all these cities 
 there were numerous Italian conductors, com- 
 posers and singers. The Italian language was 
 used in the librettos, even by German masters, 
 and Italian opera held its ground with great 
 tenacity until well into the present century. 
 
 Meanwhile, not only was prime stress laid on 
 the music as opposed to the dramatic action, 
 but this one-sided tendency was carried to the 
 greatest extreme. The aria became not only 
 the most important element of the opera, but 
 came to serve mainly as a means of displaying 
 the utmost brilliancy of vocal attainments on 
 the part of singers. Male sopranos (eunuchs) 
 competed with female singers in virtuoso per- 
 formances. Great schools for the training of 
 solo singers arose in Bologna, Rome, Milan, 
 Venice, Naples and Florence, and solo per- 
 formances were the central feature of Italian 
 opera, everything being sacrificed to sensuous 
 charm, brilliant effect and tho vanity of soloists. 
 Among the most celebrated male singers of 
 this period were Pistocchi (born 1659), Ber- 
 nacchi (born 1700), Senesino (born 1680), 
 Nicolini (born 1685), and, greatest of all, Far- 
 
 German 
 
 composers of 
 Italian opera. 
 
 Italian opera 
 degenerates 
 into a mere 
 display of 
 
 vocalization. 
 
 Great ginpcrt 
 of the 18tfk 
 century.
 
 96 
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 inelli (born 1705). Among great female sing, 
 ers were Francesco, Cuzzoni (born 1700) and 
 Faustini Bordoni (born 1693), the wife oi 
 Hasse, the composer. These two ladies and 
 Senesino were among Haendel's singers in 
 London, where he was not only composer, but 
 conductor and theatre manager, until quarrel 
 with the nobility, his patrons, threw him into 
 bankruptcy, and forced him to devote hu 
 powers to oratorio. Man} T amusing anecdotes 
 are related of the vexatious trials he had to 
 undergo from the vanity, rivalries and unend- 
 ing caprices of these singers, especially Cuz- 
 zoni's. For details of these matters the reader 
 must be referred to Schoelcher's or Rockstro's 
 "Life of Haendel," or to Grove's "Dictionary 
 of Music and Musicians," The plan of these 
 lessons will not admit of biographical sketches 
 of any length. 
 
 A long list of singers since Haendel's time 
 have been the exponents of Italian opera: 
 Catalan^ Pasta, Sontag, Malibran, Viardot, 
 Schroeder-Devrient, Grisi, Persiani, Alboni, 
 Jenny Lind, Cruvelli, Titiens, Kilsson, Patti 
 and numerous others, both male and female, of 
 greater or less distinction. The first require- 
 ment in such singers has always been beauty of 
 tone combined with florid execution ; but many 
 of them also possessed in a hig-h degree the 
 dramatic instinct and that peculiar " magnetic " 
 quality which attracts and captivates an audi- 
 ence. 
 
 Italian opera, embodying the tendencies 
 above noted, culminated in Giachomo fiossini 
 (1792-1868), one of the most original creators 
 of melody known to musical history. His 
 operas are full of sensuous charm of melody 
 
 3^eat singers 
 
 since 
 
 Haendel's 
 time. 
 
 Rossini, 
 1791M868.
 
 ITALIAN OPERA. 
 
 97 
 
 and harmony. They are brilliant and striking, 
 easily to be enjoyed without intellectual effort, 
 calculated for the entertainment of an idle, 
 luxurious, pleasure-seeking society. As such, 
 they continue to amuse the civilized world, 
 even to this day. Only one of them ; William 
 Tell, has any special dramatic force or elevat- 
 ing tendency. His principal operas, besides 
 William Tell, were Tancred, The Barber of 
 Seville, Othello, La Centenerola, La Gazza 
 Ladra, Moses in Egypt, The Lady of the Lake 
 and Semiramis. He was born at Pesaro, 
 studied under Padre Martini, a celebrated 
 teacher of Bologna, began writing operas 
 early, made a fortune by his brilliant produc- 
 tions and retired to Paris to enjoy it. Not- 
 withstanding his spontaneity, which enabled 
 him to produce fine melodies with the utmost 
 ease and fluency, he seems to have had no im- 
 pulse to compose after the pressure of pecuniary 
 necessity ceased. For nearly forty years he 
 lived a life of luxurious ease in the French 
 capital, producing nothing but his brilliant and 
 sensational, but false and tmreligious, Stdbat 
 Miter. His remains were taken to Italy in 
 1887. 
 
 Following Rossini came Vincenzo Bellini 
 (1802-1835), whose principal works were 
 Norma, Li Sonnambula and / Puritani, and 
 Gaetano Donizetti (1798-1848), the composer of 
 Anna, Bolena, Elisire d'Amore, Lucrezia 
 Borgia, Lucia di Lammermoor, La Fille du 
 Regiment and other popular operas. These 
 two are only second in rank to Rossini, and 
 their best works still keep the Italian operatic 
 stage, being heard more or less frequently all 
 over Europe and America. Lesser names were 
 
 Mis opera. 
 
 Ifis S-fnfiat 
 Mater. 
 
 Bellini, 
 
 Donizetti and 
 
 otheri.
 
 98 
 
 LESSORS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 Verdi, born 
 1813. 
 
 Jfis state. 
 
 His oneras. 
 
 foito. 
 
 Mercadante (1797-1870) and Carafa (1787- 
 1872). 
 
 One great Italian operatic composer remains to 
 be mentioned, more serious in aim than Rossini 
 or any of his successors, and nearly or quite as 
 great in every respect as Rossini himself. This 
 is Guiseppe Verdi, born in 1813 and still (1888) 
 living and producing important works. His 
 early life was devoted to operas of the common 
 Italian type, full of melodic charm, but much 
 more markedly dramatic in style, and far more 
 conscientiously written, than those of other 
 Italian composers. The orchestra, too, is treated 
 more seriously than in most Italian operas, 
 where, as Wagner once said, it is commonly used 
 " like a mighty guitar." With Verdi the orches- 
 tra is less a mere accompaniment of arias, and 
 more an integral portion of the musical means 
 of enhancing the dramatic effect. In short, he 
 has aimed more at the creation of real music- 
 drama, and less at mere sensational effects than 
 have his Italian contem poraries and predeces- 
 sors. This tendency is shown in all his great 
 works, such as H Trovatore, Rigoletto and La 
 Tramata, and still more decidedly in his latest 
 operas, Aida and Otello, written in his later 
 years, and showing decided traces of the in- 
 fluence of Wagner's theories and practice. His 
 great "Manzoni" Requiem Mass shows the 
 same influence and tendencies. 
 
 Of the present generation of Italian com- 
 posers, the best known outside of Italy is Arrigo 
 Boito, born in 1842, a talented composer and 
 poet. He wrote the text to Yerdi's Otello, and 
 has become widely known in Europe by his 
 great opera, Mefistofele, based on Goethe's 
 "Faust." He has travelled much, and is thor-
 
 ITALIAN OPERA. 
 
 99 
 
 oughly conversant with the theories of Wagner, 
 as is proved by the style of Mefistofele. Since 
 the liberation and unification of Italy, the in- 
 tellectual life and artistic efforts of the Italians 
 seem to have taken an upward tendency, and it 
 looks as if we might hope for a new " Revival 
 of Learning," such as made the Italy of three 
 hundred years ago the intellectual and artistic 
 centre of the civilized world, and the source of 
 mental inspiration.
 
 100 
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 QUESTIONS. 
 
 In what city, after Venice, did Italian opera receive its 
 greatest impulse ? 
 
 Who -was the great composer who did most for its de- 
 velopment there ? 
 
 Give some account of him. 
 
 How did his church music differ from that of the school 
 of Palestrina? 
 
 What was the predominant element in his operas? 
 
 What did he do for Italian rpera? 
 
 What has been, since his time, the chief characteristic 
 of Italian opera? 
 
 Give an account of its degeneration. 
 
 .Name some of Scarlatti's Italian contemporaries and 
 successors. 
 
 Name the most important German composers of Italian 
 opera. 
 
 Name some of the great singers of the first half of tl.e 
 last century. 
 
 Name some later singer", down to our own time. 
 
 In whose work did Italian opera culminate ? 
 
 Name his most important successors. 
 
 Name some operas by these composers. 
 
 Give an account of Verdi's woik. 
 
 Name his leading operas. 
 
 Who is the best known Italian operatic composer of to- 
 day? 
 
 Name his prindiial work.
 
 LESSON XII. 
 
 FRENCH OPERA FROM LULLY's TIME TO THE 
 PRESENT. 
 
 LULLY'S operas, as we have seen, kept the 
 French stage for abo'ut a century. During this 
 long period no French composer appeared who 
 even approximated Lully's creative power. 
 The first of his successors who could bear com- 
 parison with him was Jean Philippe Eameau 
 (1683-1764). He was a much greater musician 
 than Lully, a man of great scientific attain- 
 ments. His works on harmony made an epoch 
 in the treatment of the subject. He sought a 
 basis both for the major and the minor chord 
 in the science of acoustics. He derived the 
 major chord (over-chord) from the series of 
 harmonic overtones, but failed to discover the 
 corresponding undei'-tone series which make 
 the minor chord (under-chord) the reciprocal 
 of the major. This discovery was reserved for 
 our own time, and the application of it to the 
 science of harmony is only now fairly begun. 
 But much of Rameau's work is permanent, and 
 most of it was so valuable that it has formed 
 the foundation of harmony teaching from that 
 day to this. He did much toward introducing 
 the system of "equal temperament," and he, 
 perhaps more than any one else, determined the 
 abandonment of the old church modes and the 
 establishment of our modern major and minor 
 keys. He was a virtuoso on the harpsichord, 
 and his compositions for that instrument had a 
 great reputation in their day. 
 
 101 
 
 LEMON XII. 
 
 JRameau, 
 1683-1764. 
 
 Sis theoretical 
 work.
 
 102 
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 Lesson XII. 
 
 ffis work as a 
 composer. 
 
 Rise of French 
 comic opera. 
 
 Rameau was nearly fifty 3'ears old when he 
 wrote his first opera. His works of this kind 
 are twenty-two in number, and are a great 
 advance on Lully's in originality, in wealth and 
 variety of resources, and in dramatic effective- 
 ness. Like all epoch-making minds, he was 
 violently attacked by those who were accus- 
 tomed to the old, and could not reconcile them- 
 selves to the new modes of musical expression, 
 however suitable. But his works made their 
 way and are justly regarded as among the most 
 brilliant achievements of the French musical 
 genius. His work, like Lull's, had for its 
 main object truthfulness of dramatic expres- 
 sion, and is by this distinguished from the 
 Italian school. It surpassed Lully's mainly 
 in the enlargement of the musical means of 
 expression. 
 
 Rameau, like Lully, devoted himself to "Grand 
 Opera," as it is called musical dramas on seri- 
 ous and mostly classical subjects. But it was 
 during his time that French operetta (opera 
 comique) arose, and has held its place beside 
 grand opera ever since. In 1752 a company of 
 Italian singers produced Italian comic opera in 
 Paris, and although they remained there only 
 two years, they gave the Parisian public an 
 impulse which resulted in the production of 
 French comic opera on national everj-day sub- 
 jects in a free, unconventional style. There 
 had been French operettas before, but thej" 
 were comparatively insignificant. Now, stimu- 
 lated by the awakened desire of the public 
 and by the reaction against the stiff and stilted 
 manner w r hich had become established as the 
 only respectable style in French literature and 
 art, men of ability began to devote themselves to
 
 FRENCH OPERA. 
 
 103 
 
 comic opera in real earnest. First among these 
 composers were Dauvergne (1713-1797), an 
 Italian; Duni (1709-1775); Philidor (1726- 
 1795), and Monsigny (1729-1817). Their work 
 culminated in Gretry (1741-1813), in whose 
 works French operetta reached a point perhaps 
 never since surpassed. They are thoroughly 
 representative of the French dramatic genius 
 in this field. 
 
 How great was the unnaturalness of the intel- 
 lectual tendencies these men combatted, we 
 may learn by a single example. In Louis XI Vs 
 time, the art of landscape gardening in France 
 was held to require that all the trees should be 
 clipped into regular and fantastic artificial forms, 
 no tree being allowed to develop itself natur- 
 ally or express its own nature in its own way. 
 The mental tendencies of the French cultivated 
 classes were just as artificial in all departments 
 of art and literature as in landscape gardening, 
 and it was inevitable that a reaction should 
 take place in the direction of giving free play 
 to the natural tendencies of human nature. 
 
 This reaction culminated in the so-called 
 " philosophy of enlightenment," of which Jean 
 Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) is the greatest 
 representative. In the thought of these men 
 the ideal of the unrestrained play of all human 
 impulses was carried to as great an extreme as 
 had been the ideal of artificial restraints and 
 even distortions in their predecessors. This 
 ideal culminated in the license and extrava- 
 gance of the French Revolution, extended its 
 influence to all fields of mental activity and to 
 all social relations, and has not yet spent its 
 force. Rousseau contributed to musical history 
 some important controversial writings directed 
 
 Composers of 
 
 JFrench comic 
 
 opera. 
 
 Artiflctalness 
 of intellectuai 
 lif" in France 
 at this period. 
 
 Kousseau 
 and the 
 " philosophy of 
 enlighten- 
 ment.'"
 
 104 
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY 
 
 against the artificial forms prevalent in grand 
 opera, a Dictionary of Music, and an original 
 operetta or melo-drama. 
 
 French Other composers of operetta at this period 
 
 composers of &n & later were D'Alaura c (1753-1809), who 
 
 operetta. . /' 
 
 wrote about sixty operettas and operas; Isouard 
 (1177-1818); Berton (1766-1844); Catel (1773- 
 1830); Boieldieu (1775-1834); the composer of 
 The Caliph of Bagdad and La Dame Blanche; 
 Gossec (1734-1829); also an important composer 
 of grand opera and of symphonies and chamber 
 music, Mehul (1763-1817), best known b}' his 
 opera of Joseph and his Brethren; Herold 
 (1791-1833), best known by his opera Zampa, 
 the overture of which is familiar to everybody ; 
 Halevy (1799-1862), author of The Jewess, 
 Auber (1782-1871), author of Fra Diavolo and 
 Masianello, and Adam (1803-1856). These 
 names bring us fairly up to our own time and 
 to comic operas, and, for that matter, to serious 
 operas, which are still heard on the. French, 
 German, English and American stage. 
 
 Now, to go back to the development of 
 French Grand Opera, the greatest name imme- 
 diately succeeding Rameau was Christoph Hitter 
 von Gluck (1714-1787), a Bohemian, the author 
 of Orpheus, Alceste, Armida, Iphegenia and 
 other grand operas on classical subjects. His 
 was a creative genius of a high order, and his 
 Orpheus, at least, is still given both in concert 
 rooms and on the stage. He held very strong 
 opinions in favor of dramatic truthfulness in 
 operatic music, as opposed to the prevalent 
 Italian tendencies ; and, as he was unable to 
 make any headway against the fashion of the 
 time in his own country, he went to Paris, 
 found there a congenial field, and spent most 
 
 Gluck. 
 
 ffls work and 
 influence.
 
 FRENCH OPERA. 
 
 105 
 
 of his life writing for the French stage. One 
 of the prominent characteristics of his operas, 
 and of French Grand Opera since, has been 
 recitative, in broad, elaborate form, fully ac- 
 companied by the orchestra, giving free, spon- 
 taneous utterance to the emotions of the indi- 
 vidual actor in the drama, as opposed to the 
 formal aria of the Italian opera, where the 
 musical predominates over the dramatic ele- 
 ment. It is the recitative that primarily char- 
 acterizes the French Grand Opera. 
 
 Two Italian composers deserve to be men- 
 tioned here, because they were both strongly in- 
 fluenced by the works of Gluck, and both wrote 
 more or less for the Paris stage. These are 
 Salieri (1750-1828), who spent most of his life 
 in Vienna, but wrote The Danaides for Paris; 
 and Spontini (1784-1 851), for a longtime direc- 
 tor of the Royal Opera at Berlin, whose best 
 known opera is La Vestale. 
 
 The next great name in the annals of French 
 Grand Opera is M. L. Cherubini (1760-1842). 
 He was an Italian, born in Florence, trained a 
 musician, and a composer of Italian operas 
 until he went to Paris in 1786. A visit to 
 Vienna enabled him to hear some of Haydn's 
 symphonies, which produced a great effect upon 
 him, and influenced profoundly his whole future 
 activity as a composer. His style is severe 
 and classical. His operas, Medea, The Water- 
 carrier, Faniska, The Abencerrages, Lodoiska 
 and others, give him a very high, place as an 
 operatic composer. His Requiem is considered 
 the noblest Catholic church music since Pales- 
 trina, and he wrote many other important 
 works. From 1816 to his death he was Director 
 of the Paris Conservatory of Music, and Pro- 
 
 Salieri and 
 Spontini. 
 
 CTierubini. 
 
 His operas 
 
 and other 
 
 works.
 
 106 
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 L.KSSOK XII. 
 
 Meyerbeer. 
 
 His operas 
 and heir 
 character- 
 istics. 
 
 Ami/raise 
 
 Thomas, 
 Charles 
 
 Gr&unod, 
 Hector 
 
 Berlioz. 
 
 fessor of Composition there. As the titles of 
 his operas show, classical subjects, taken from 
 the Greek mythology, began now to give way 
 to other serious subjects in Grand Opera. From 
 his time on, the characteristic distinction be- 
 tween Grand Opera and Comic Opera has been 
 that Comic Opera admits spoken dialogue, 
 while in the Grand Opera everything is sung, 
 the dialogue and soliloquies being mostly in 
 recitative. 
 
 It is surprising how many of the great names 
 among French Grand Opera composers are 
 names of foreigners. Lull}' and Cherubini were 
 Italians; Gluck was a Bohemian; Gossec was 
 a Belgian. To these names we have to acid 
 that of Jacob Meyerbeer (1794-1864), a German 
 Jew, born in Berlin, where his father was a 
 wealthy banker. He was a fellow student with 
 Weber, under the Abbe Vogler, in Vienna, 
 found his congenial place in Paris, and wrote a 
 series of Grand Operas for the Paris stage. 
 The greatest of them are Robert the Devil, 
 The Huguenots and The Prophet. Meyerbeer 
 had great gifts and much skill as a composer ; 
 but he wrote for effect, more to please and 
 amuse than to elevate the Parisian public, and 
 stands lower in the estimation of musicians 
 than he would if his aims had been higher. He 
 helped to degrade French taste and to make 
 Wagner's success in Paris impossible. 
 
 Since his time the greatest names in French 
 opera have been Ambroise Thomas (born 1811), 
 who has written many operas, both serious and 
 comic, Mignon being the best known; and 
 Charles Gounod (born 1818), best known by 
 his masterpiece, Faust. Hector Berlioz (1803- 
 1869) occupies a unique position in French
 
 FRENCH OPERA. 
 
 107 
 
 flaint-Saent. 
 
 Offenbach. 
 
 opera, and, indeed, in French music generally. 
 His operas, Benvenuto Cellini, Beatrice and 
 Benedick, The Trojans in Carthage and The 
 Fall of Troy, had no success in his lifetime. 
 The same is true of his symphonies, cantatas 
 and sacred music. He is only now beginning 
 to come into vogue. 
 
 Camille Saint-Saens (born 1835) has also 
 written good operas. But comic opera has 
 been the characteristic field of French com- 
 posers since the time of Boieldieu, that is, since 
 about 1800. Jacques 0/enbach (1819-1880), 
 another foreigner, a German Jew, born in Co- 
 logne, represents the culmination of the ten- 
 dency toward burlesque in French comic opera. 
 He flourished during the corrupt period of the 
 Second Empire, and wrote burlesque full of 
 equivocal situations for the amusement of the 
 Parisians. He had much originality and his 
 melodies are often striking. His operettas: 
 Orpheus in the Underworld, La Belle Helene, 
 Blue Beard, The Grand Duchesse of Gerolstein 
 and others have made their way all over the 
 civilized world. E. Audran (born 1842) is 
 known in this country by his operettas, Olivette 
 and the Mascotte; Robert Planquette (born 1850), 
 by his Chimes of Normandy; Victor Masse 
 (born 1822), by his opera, Paul and Virginia 
 (he has written many others), and J. E. Massenet 
 (born 1842), by his opera, Don Csesar de Bazan. 
 The last two are professors in the Paris Con- 
 servatory and have composed much in other 
 fields. 
 
 Audran, 
 
 Planquette, 
 
 Masse,
 
 108 
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 QUESTIONS. 
 
 Who was the first important French opera composer 
 after Lully ? 
 
 What was his rank as a theorist? 
 
 fn what special way did he advance the science of 
 harmony ? 
 
 How old was he when he began writing operas ? 
 . How were they received and why? 
 
 In what were they an advance on Lully's? 
 
 When did French operetta begin lo be prominent ? 
 
 To what was the rise of operetta due ? 
 
 Name some composers in this field? 
 
 What name mat ks the culmination of this species? 
 
 What were the intellectual tendencies of the time, as 
 illustrated in French landscape gardening? 
 
 What was meant by the ''philosophy of enlighten- 
 ment?" 
 
 Who was its greatest representative? 
 
 Give dates ? 
 
 Name some of the important composers of French 
 comic opera up to our own time ? 
 
 Name the great composer who succeeded Rameau ? 
 
 Give dates ? 
 
 Name some of his operas? 
 
 Name and des< ribes a prominent characteristic of his 
 operas and of French grand opera since ? 
 
 Name two Italiaji composers who were strongly influ- 
 enced by Gluck ? 
 
 Who was the next great composer for the Paris stage ? 
 
 Name some of his operas ? 
 
 What is now the distinction between grand opera and 
 comic opera? 
 
 Give an account of Meyerbeer's work ? 
 
 Give dates and name his important operas? 
 
 Name the greatest French opera composers since his 
 time and those of operetta ?
 
 LESSON XIII. 
 
 GERMAN OPERA. 
 
 OPERA in Germany, 'as we have seen, was, for 
 a long time, by no means German opera. The 
 nearest approach to it was in Hamburg, which 
 city was, for the half century, beginning about 
 1690, the musical metropolis of Germany. 
 Several composers of ability contributed to 
 this result. One of the most important of 
 them was Reinhard Reiser (1673-1739), who 
 went to Hamburg in 1694. He was an original 
 and prolilic genius, and wrote a hundred and 
 twenty operas, besides a great deal of other 
 music. These operas not only became very 
 popular in Hamburg and elsewhere in Germany, 
 but even made their way to Paris. As each of 
 them contained forty or fifty arias, besides 
 recitatives and concerted pieces, they represent 
 a vast amount of productive power and in- 
 dustry. Reiser's melodies are said to have 
 been graceful melodious and passionate. If his 
 character had commanded as much of respect 
 as his talent did of admiration, he would have 
 exerted a profound and far-reaching influence 
 on German musical art. But he preferred 
 cheap and temporary popular success to ideal 
 ends, and so degenerated and finally lost the 
 respect of the public. His genius raised the 
 Hamburg opera, for a short time, to a high 
 plane, so that it attracted such a man as 
 Haendel. But by 1740, it had sunk to a mere 
 display of scenery and decorations in which 
 real art-ideas were of small account. 
 
 LWSON XI It 
 
 Opera in 
 Hamburg. 
 
 Reiser. 
 
 109
 
 110 
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 LESSON "KITL. 
 
 Mattheimn. 
 Telemann. 
 
 The "Sing- 
 spiel." 
 
 Mozart, 
 1756-1791. 
 
 In the meantime, Hamburg had greatly 
 profited by the work of some remarkable men, 
 especially Johann Mattheson (1681-1764), a 
 composer of talent, an excellent theorist and a 
 highly accomplished musician in every respect ; 
 George Philip Telemann (1681-1767) and, 
 finally, of Haendel himself, who went there as a 
 youth of eighteen, played in the orchestra, and 
 wrote his first opera for the Hamburg stage. 
 
 The beginnings of German opera proper, in 
 Hamburg as elsewhere, are to be found in the 
 Sing-spiel. The Sing-spiel, like the English 
 Ballad-opera and the French Vaudeville, was 
 originally a light play interspersed with popu- 
 lar songs, generally ballads, apt to be of a 
 satirical tendency and with a short refrain. 
 Such plays were popular all through the period 
 when Italian opera was fashionable, and were 
 often composed by writers of high standing in the 
 various capitals and musical centres of Europe. 
 W. A. Mozart (1756-1791), in Vienna, some of 
 whose best operas were written to Italian texts, 
 and most of whose work is quite as much Italian 
 as German, adopted this form, used German 
 words and subjects which, if not characteristi- 
 cally German, were no more Italian than Ger- 
 man, and made real operas out of them. These 
 works, especially his Magic Flute and his Ab- 
 duction from the Seraglio, may be looked on as 
 addressed more to the German than to the 
 Italian taste. But this can hardly be said of 
 his Don Juan and The Marriage of Figaro. 
 
 Mozart was, in short, a German, with Ger- 
 man feelings and tastes, but trained in the 
 prevalent Italian school. He never departed 
 in any essential particular from the princi- 
 ples of Italian opera. The plan of his works
 
 GERMAN OPERA. 
 
 Ill 
 
 is the traditional one; the arias are, to all 
 intents and purposes, Italian arias. But hav- 
 ing German leanings and being an original 
 creative genius of the first rank, his Italian 
 schooling was sufficiently modified, especially 
 when he wrote from the Sing-spiel standpoint, 
 to give his works, in part, a quasi-national 
 character. The Magic Flute, in fact, is com- 
 monly regarded as a real German opera. But 
 its arias and its forms betray Mozart's Italian 
 training. It is really a mixture of styles, but 
 with strong German tendencies. 
 
 L. von Beethoven (1770-1827) made a single 
 attempt at opera, and aimed to make his Fidelio 
 a German opera. So it was, if we regard only 
 its serious aims, its earnestness and depth of 
 feeling and the absence of all concessions to 
 the vanity of solo singers. In these respects, 
 indeed, it is an advance beyond Mozart. But 
 Beethoven established no new principles of 
 form or content in the music-drama, and the 
 subject of Fidelio is cosmopolitan rather than 
 German. In short, what Beethoven did was 
 merely to inculcate seriousness and elevation 
 of aim in this one example. But these qualities 
 are not necessarily confined to Germany. To 
 create a really characteristic German music- 
 drama something more was needed than a mere 
 protest against the shallowness, the brilliant 
 sensationalism and the seductive tunefulness 
 of current Italian opera as represented by Bee- 
 thoven's great contemporary, Rossini. Fidelio 
 is German in that it represents an earnestness 
 and elevation of tone much more frequently 
 found among German than among Italian com- 
 posers since Palestrina. But it is, after all, 
 Beethoven rather than Germany that speaks in 
 
 Beethovfn. 
 1770-1827.
 
 112 
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 Weber, 
 
 1786-1826. 
 
 it. It is an opera which represents an indi- 
 vidual rather than a nation, and it does not 
 mark the beginning of a national style of opera. 
 Besides, it has serious defects as a singable and 
 dramatic work. Beethoven's great field lay in 
 the symphony, not in the opera. Schubert's 
 attempts at dramatic composition were still 
 less successful. 
 
 What neither Beethoven nor Schubert could 
 do for German opera was done by a great con- 
 temporary of theirs, Carl Maria von Weber 
 (1786-1826). The son of a theatre manager 
 and actor, "Weber was familiar with stage effects 
 from his earliest childhood. A roving life 
 made him familiar with German feelings, Ger- 
 man legends, German modes of thinking in all 
 classes of society. His training was German 
 rather than Italian, and was picked up in a 
 desultory way from a variety of masters. He 
 acquired experience as an opera conductor 
 when he was very young, taking his first con- 
 ductorship at Breslau when he was only eigh- 
 teen years of age. Thus he was amply equipped 
 to write operas in the German spirit to German 
 text, embod3 T ing German legends, ideas and 
 feelings. This he did in his great opera, Der 
 Freischutz, written for Dresden in 1821. He 
 had been called there for the express purpose 
 of conducting German opera in a theatre espe- 
 cially set apart for it, in opposition to the es- 
 tablished Italian one, which principally enjoyed 
 the favor of the court. He had a hard fight, 
 meeting with all sorts of opposition. But Dur 
 Freischutz was such a master work, it was so 
 original and fresh, it so characteristically em- 
 bodied the peculiar romantic spirit of the Ger- 
 many of that day, it appealed so strongly to
 
 GERMAN OPERA. 
 
 113 
 
 national and patriotic feelings that it overcame 
 all opposition. No opera was ever more popu- 
 lar. It went all over Germany, it aroused 
 popular enthusiasm, it stimulated hosts of imi- 
 tators among young composers; in short, it 
 marks an epoch in musical history and may 
 fairly be considered as the beginning of Ger- 
 man opera. Two other operas followed this, 
 Euryanthe and Oberon, both of high rank. 
 Weber's earlier attempts, Abu Hassan, Peter 
 Schmoll and Sylvana are less important. 
 
 With Weber begins the great Romantic 
 period of musical art. We have already ap- 
 plied the term " classical " to Palestrina (see 
 Lesson XI.) on the ground that he combined 
 nobility of Content (what he had to express) 
 with perfection of Form (mode of expression), 
 and that he exerted permanent, profound and 
 far-reaching influence on the future course of 
 musical history. In this sense, Bach and 
 Haendel were " classical" composers, so were 
 Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven in the field of 
 instrumental music. But when, through the 
 labors of these and other great men, musical 
 Form, the whole technic of musical composi- 
 tion, had been developed to the point where it 
 was available to express freely and perfectly 
 all phases of human feeling, there came a time 
 when men began to lay more stress on the 
 emotions to be expressed than on the form of 
 the expression. The " Classical " movement 
 was essentially a development of Form. The 
 " Romantic " movement, beginning with Weber, 
 was essentially an attempt to utter, perfectly 
 if possible, but at any rate to utter, whether 
 perfectly or not, feelings remote from every- 
 day experience, aspirations after ideals unat- 
 
 Bfginnlng o/ 
 
 the Romantic 
 
 Period. 
 
 The "Classi- 
 cal" contrasted 
 with the" Ro- 
 mantic" move- 
 ment.
 
 114 
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 Occasion of the 
 Romantic 
 
 movement in 
 Germany. 
 
 tained and perhaps unattainable, dissatisfac- 
 tion with present surroundings, longings after 
 ideal conditions more or less vaguely appre- 
 hended in imagination. The Romantic move- 
 ment in music was nearly contemporary with a 
 similar movement in German literature, and 
 was a part of the same .great movement of 
 mind. As Dr. Langhans has pointed out in 
 Chapter XI of his " History of Music," the 
 tendency to seek relief from present unsatis- 
 factory conditions in the imaginary surround- 
 ings of an ideal world is by no means new, nor 
 is it confined to any period of the world's 
 history. But it shows itself with peculiar force 
 whenever outward conditions become peculiarly 
 unsatisfactory or painful. Whenever men are 
 oppressed with pain, hunger, want, disappoint- 
 ment of any sort, they turn for relief to the 
 world of the imagination, and this life of the 
 imagination sooner or later finds expression in 
 some form of art. 
 
 The Romantic movement in German litera- 
 ture and German music was closely connected 
 with the oppressions, confusions, privations 
 and political and social disturbances of the 
 Napoleonic era. Beethoven, for a time, was a 
 worshipper of Napoleon, as the world's great 
 deliverer and the champion of Liberty, Equality 
 and Fraternity. The noblest hopes and aspira- 
 tions of the time of the French Revolution find 
 expression in Beethoven's music. But when 
 Napoleon became a self-seeking despot, the 
 oppressor instead of the deliverer of Europe ; 
 when governments fell before him, when whole 
 peoples were thrown into confusion, homes 
 were destroyed, women Were maltreated, men 
 were butchered by the thousand for his
 
 GERMAN OPERA. 
 
 115 
 
 aggrandizement ; when all Europe seemed to 
 be crushed under his despotic sway, and every 
 one seemed powerless to cure the evils of the 
 time, men's dissatisfaction, aspiration, anxiety, 
 despair, anger, fear, hope, denied their natural 
 outlet of action, found relief in the fields of 
 literature and art. Thus was born the German 
 romantic literature and, a little later, the Ger- 
 man romantic music. 
 
 Weber's " Der Freischiitz " was popular not 
 only because its subject and treament were 
 romantic, but because they were national. 
 Following him came a host of lesser competi- 
 tors. The greatest of them was undoubtedly 
 Heinrich Marschner (1796-1861). He was a 
 highly-educated, liberal-minded man, a musi- 
 cian of groat accomplishments and a composer 
 of marked talent. From 1831 to 1859 he was 
 conductor of the Royal Opera at Hanover. 
 His greatest opera, Hans Heih'ng, forms a sort 
 of connecting link between Weber and Wagner. 
 He wrote a number of other operas, of which 
 only two survive, The Vampire and The Tem- 
 plar and the Jewess, founded on Sir Walter 
 Scott's IvanJwe. 
 
 Next to Marschner in importance conies 
 Ludwig Spohr (1784-1859). His greatest and 
 best known opera, Jessonda, was first given in 
 1823. 
 
 The romantic movement in opera culminated 
 in the work of Richard Wagner (1813-1883), 
 certainly one of the greatest minds of our time 
 and probably one of the greatest yet produced 
 by the human race. He was born in Leipzig 
 during the year of the great battle there in 
 which Napoleon received his first check. His 
 childhood and youth coincided with the re- 
 
 Marschner. 
 
 Spohr. 
 
 Bichard 
 
 Wanner. 
 1813-1883.
 
 116 
 
 LESSONS TN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 ffis youthful 
 
 rharacteristlcs 
 
 and mental 
 
 activity. 
 
 actionary years when the defeat of the great 
 French emperor had strengthened all the other 
 European sovereigns against all liberal tenden- 
 cies in France and among their own subjects. 
 It was a time of dissatisfaction, of suppressed 
 aspiration and longing among the. nations. 
 The leaven of the great ideas of the French 
 Revolution was working in the mind of Europe. 
 and fresh outbreaks of the revolutionary spirit 
 were gradually preparing. 
 
 Young Wagner was of an ardent tempera- 
 ment, had a clear, strong intellect, a glowing 
 imagination, and shared enthusiastically in the 
 liberal, patriotic aspirations, enthusiasms and 
 disappointments of his time. His earty study 
 of the piano came to nothing, because he could 
 not be made to practice the necessary technical 
 exercises, and there is no record of any other 
 systematic study of music in his early years. 
 After his father's death, which happened in his 
 infancy, his mother married an actor, Ludwig 
 Greyer, a cultivated, intelligent man, who did 
 much for Wagner's education. The family 
 then removed to Dresden, where he became 
 interested in ancient languages and in the 
 Greek literature, especially, and afterwards in 
 Shakespeare. His reading of the latter stimu- 
 lated him to write a tragedy in which, as he 
 informs us in an autobiographical sketch, he 
 killed off forty-two of his characters before the 
 end of the second act, and had to let most of 
 them reappear as ghosts in order to keep up 
 the action. This play occupied him for two 
 years. Such energetic mental activity as this, 
 in a mere child, was prophetic of the creative 
 power which afterwards engaged the attention 
 of the whole civilized world.
 
 GERMAN OPERA. 
 
 117 
 
 The first profound impression made on him 
 by music was at one of the early performances 
 of " Der Freischiitz." His mother, again a 
 widow, soon after removed to Leipzig, and 
 here he made the acquaintance of the Beethoven 
 S3-mphonies and of the same master's music to 
 Goethe's Egmont. This stirred him up to write 
 music to his own tragedy. He found he knew 
 nothing of harmony and that he needed it, so 
 he undertook to prepare himself for composi- 
 tion in a week's study of a text-book, without 
 a teacher! Characteristic, this, of his un- 
 bounded self-confidence, independence, and also 
 of his native energy and spontaneous mental 
 activity. His whole student life was full of 
 just this sort of self-guided activity. His mind 
 responded to whatever stimulus suited its 
 peculiarities, and whatever he became inter- 
 ested in he pursued with resistless energy until 
 some new interest turned his intellectual forces 
 into a new channel. 
 
 It was during these student years in Leipzig 
 that he determined to become a musician, pur- 
 sued his musical studies, partly under excellent 
 teachers, for he did, at last, find out that 
 teachers could help him, and wrote considera- 
 ble music, of no value except as apprentice 
 work preparatory to his future creative career. 
 He developed himself on many sides, not only 
 by musical and literary study, but by practical 
 acquaintance with the stage, availing himself 
 of the opportunities given him by his relatives, 
 some of whom were connected with the theatre, 
 making the acquaintance of many works and writ- 
 ing an opera, which was not performed. He also 
 began writing criticisms which showed much 
 vigor of intellect and keenness of perception. 
 
 LISBON XIII. 
 
 Removal to 
 
 Leipzig and 
 
 student life 
 
 there. 
 
 Musical 
 studies.
 
 118 
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 LESSOX XIII. 
 
 Conductor in 
 
 1834. 
 
 Conductor at 
 
 Kr>nigxl>r.rg 
 
 and R!ya, 
 
 1835-6. 
 
 Composes 
 " Rienzi." 
 
 &oes to Paris. 
 Poverty. 
 
 This brings us to 1834, the year of his 
 majority. In the fall of that year he became 
 onductor at the Magdeburg theatre, a position 
 which he held two years, profiting greatly by 
 his experience. He studied thoroughly a great 
 number of the current German, French and 
 Italian operas, and learned a greal deal more 
 from his work in preparing them for stage per- 
 formance than he could ever have learned in 
 any other way. He wrote here his second 
 opera, on Shakespeare's " Measure for Measure," 
 and had it performed, but with very incomplete 
 success. In 1836 he was conductor at Konigs- 
 berg, and the next year at Riga, but became 
 more and more dissatisfied with the deficiencies 
 inevitable in the appointments of the theatres 
 of these small towns, and more and more con- 
 vinced that they were no place for him and his 
 work. They had served his ends for appren- 
 tice experience, and he had outgrown them. 
 He had planned and finished a grand opera on 
 the story of " Rienzi," the last of the Roman 
 Tribunes, an opera which demanded the full 
 resources of a first-class stage. With character- 
 istic audacity he determined to strike out 
 boldly for success on the Parisian stage. Noth- 
 ing less than this would content this plucky 
 young fellow. So to Paris he went, sailing 
 first to London through the Baltic and North 
 Seas, meeting with stormo, picking up sea 
 legends from the Norwegian sailors, seeing 
 much of the coast scenery of the Baltic and 
 conceiving the plan of his next opera, " The 
 Flying Dutchman." But when he got to Paris, 
 success did not come. Meyerbeer tried to help 
 him secure a hearing for his Rienzi, but failed. 
 He had no money, he lived from hand to mouth,
 
 GERMAN OPERA. 
 
 119 
 
 by doing hack work for the music dealers and 
 by writing for the newspapers. There was 
 absolutely no opportunity for him in Paris. 
 He stayed there in poverty until the spring of 
 1842, wrote his "Faust" overture and his 
 " Flying Dutchman " during the interval, and 
 tried to get them performed in Germany. In 
 this he at last succeeded. " Rienzi " was ac- 
 cepted in Dresden and the "Flying Dutchman" 
 in Berlin, both in the spring of 1842. He went 
 to Dresden to supervise the production of 
 "Rienzi, "and was soon appointed to the con- 
 ductorship formerly held by Weber. Now be- 
 gan his great career as a composer. " Tann- 
 hiiuser" was given in 1845, but was so original 
 in style, so different from anything to which 
 the public was accustomed, that hardly any- 
 body liked . it, and the critics fell foul of it in 
 the savage way to which every one of his 
 predecessors in original musical creation had 
 to submit. It was no new phenomenon in 
 musical history. He wrote " Lohengrin " in 
 1847, but could not get it performed in his own 
 theater. 
 
 Then came the stormy }-ear of 1848, a year 
 of uprisings against oppression, thrones totter- 
 ing, aristocracies shaking in their shoes, but 
 ending in hopeless submission for the masses 
 and death or exile for many of the noblest men 
 of Germany. Wagner, always a liberal, took 
 active part in the revolutionary movement, and 
 when the end came, had to take refuge in 
 Switzerland. In Zurich he lived until 1859, 
 occupying himself largely with writing contro- 
 versial pamphlets in which he set forth his own 
 art beliefs, his theories of the relation of music 
 to the drama and his opinions on things in 
 
 Faust over- 
 ture. 
 Flying 
 
 Dutchman, 
 
 Conductor in 
 Dresden, 1842. 
 
 Tannhauser, 
 1815. 
 
 Lohengrin. 
 1847. 
 
 Revolution 
 and exile, 184& 
 
 H Is contro- 
 versial 
 writings.
 
 120 
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 His audacity. 
 
 Grounds for 
 
 his .ielf-confl- 
 
 dence. 
 
 Summary of 
 his ideal of 
 Music-drama . 
 
 general and art matters in particular. He 
 violently attacked not only the absurdities and 
 trivialities of the Italian opera, but Meyerbeer, 
 Mendelssohn, in short most of the reigning 
 powers, saving Beethoven, whose worshiper 
 he always declared himself to be, and whose 
 work he aimed to continue and enlarge. He 
 did not stick at trifles, this man whose operas 
 the public would not listen to. Nothing was 
 too audacious for him. He went his own way, 
 thought his own thoughts, expressed them 
 publicly in no measured terms, knocked the 
 popular idols from their pedestals right and 
 left with sledge-hammer blows, set up his own 
 productions in their place and loudly called on 
 the outraged devotees to fall down and worship 
 the new divinities on pain of being considered 
 stupid, dull Philistines, devoid 'of all true 
 artistic intelligence. 
 
 In most men this would have been insane 
 conceit. In Wagner it was self-confidence, 
 based on a true insight. He had seen, clearly, 
 truths which the greatest of his predecessors 
 had at best dimly divined. " The Music of the 
 Future " was the title of one of his pamphlets 
 in which he set forth the theories on which he 
 worked. It became a rallying cry for his 
 friends, and a phrase of contempt in the mouths 
 of his enemies. The central point of his con- 
 ception, briefly stated, is as follows: The ideal 
 art-work, which is to meet the rational require- 
 ments of the future, must combine all the arts 
 in the service of one poetic conception. Music 
 must not, as in the Italian opera, claim pre- 
 cedence of poetry, nor must poetry exclude 
 music, because music is capable of vastly in- 
 tensifying the emotional efiect of the words.
 
 GERMAN OPERA. 
 
 121 
 
 Combined with these two must be the added 
 effect of the other fine arts painting, sculpture, 
 acting, pantomine, dancing, everything, in short, 
 which can add to the clearness of the author's 
 conception and enhance the effect upon the im- 
 agination. No concessions must be made to the 
 vanity of singers, none to intellectual supine- 
 ness or indolence on the part of the audience. 
 The creative artist's poetic ideal must be su- 
 preme. The personality of the interpreters 
 must be sunk in the realization of this ideal. 
 In short, the art-work of the future was to be 
 a music-drama, setting forth in beautiful form 
 some noble conception, and combining the 
 resources of all the arts for its worthy embodi- 
 ment. Each art must sacrifice its supremacy 
 to artistic unity of effect. 
 
 It was not enough for Wagner to set forth 
 this conception in glowing colors in his numer- 
 ous pamphlets ; he attacked all existing, aa 
 well as all previous art-work, as unworthy of 
 this, the only true ideal. He proclaimed the 
 inferiority of the spoken drama, of purely in- 
 strumental music. He affirmed that Beethoven, 
 the greatest of instrumental writers, after bring- 
 ing pure music to the utmost limit of its de- 
 velopment, had felt the necessity of combining 
 it with words, and that the Ninth Symphony 
 pointed the way to the art-work of the future, 
 which it was Wagner's mission to proclaim to 
 the world. 
 
 He did more than theorize and controvert. 
 He embodied his theoretical principles in a 
 series of stupendous master-works, which, in 
 spite of the violent storm of opposition they 
 had to encounter, both on account of their 
 novelty and on account of the personal enmitj" 
 
 His attack on 
 other produc- 
 tions. 
 
 His great 
 Master -works.
 
 122 
 
 LESSORS IN MUSrCAL HISTORY. 
 
 their author had incurred by his audacious 
 polemics against established and long-cherished 
 ideals, forced their way to recognition, chal- 
 lenged, and gradually commanded the respect 
 and admiration of the best minds, and stand 
 to-day acknowledged as among the most colos- 
 sal products of human genius. He had now 
 reached his intellectual maturity, and had made 
 clear his own ideals to his own mind, partly by 
 his attempts to embody them in his music- 
 dramas, and partly by his efforts to explain 
 them to others in his controversal writings. 
 Henceforth, he looked not only on "Rienzi" 
 and "The Flying Dutchman," but also on 
 " Tannhauser " and " Lohengrin," far in ad- 
 vance of popular appreciation as they then 
 were, as mere apprentice work the necessary 
 preparation for his mature period of produc- 
 tion. In " Tristan and Isolde " he fully and 
 satisfactorily embodied his ripe views, and" fol- 
 lowed it up with his great tetralogy, based on 
 the " Xiebelungen Lied," called, " Der Ring des 
 Niebelungen," a series of four connected music- 
 dramas, "Das Rhinegold," "Die Walkiire," 
 " Siegfried " and " Gotterdamerung." The 
 list of his masterpieces closes with " Die Meis- 
 tersinger," his sole effort at comedy, and " Par- 
 sifal," which deals with the legend of the Holy 
 Grail. 
 
 In consonance with the principles above 
 stated, these works show important peculiari- 
 ties of structure. They dispense entirely with 
 the traditional operatic and instrumental forms. 
 There are no arias, no "closed" forms any- 
 where. Wherever the action goes on the music 
 goes on. The continuous flow of melody cor- 
 responds to the emotional current of the 
 
 Tristan and 
 JMtfe. 
 
 The Niebel- 
 ungen. 
 Tetralogy. 
 
 Thf Jfaster- 
 singers. 
 
 Structure of 
 
 these musle- 
 
 Arainas.
 
 GERMAN OPERA. 
 
 123 
 
 drama,. The vocal parts are more impassioned 
 declamation than singing in the traditional 
 sense. The orchestra has a principal place in- 
 stead of being subordinated to a mere accom- 
 paniment. Each leading character is indicated 
 or suggested by a characteristic " leading-mo- 
 tive," and these motives are continually inter- 
 mingled in the orchestra in a complex web of 
 melodies varying according to the dramatic 
 situations, and to the progress of events upon 
 the stage. Nowhere is the attention of the 
 auditor withdrawn for an instant from the mat- 
 ter in hand. All the elements present combine 
 into one grand, artistic whole. From the be- 
 ginning the interest is concentrated on the 
 progress of events, until the drama culminates 
 in a, magnificent climax. In all the essential 
 requirements of an art-work, unity, variety, sym- 
 metry, contrast, climax, these music-dramas 
 are ideally perfect. 
 
 In harmony, Wagner was an innovator. The 
 essential peculiarity of his harmonies lies in his 
 recognition of the value and naturalness of the 
 third and sixth relationships.* There had 
 been hints of this in Beethoven, Schubert, and 
 others. But in Wagner the principle comes, 
 for the first time, to its full recognition and 
 application. He broadened the conception of 
 tonality to its utmost limits, to the utter confu- 
 sion of contemporary theorists. No stricture 
 on him was more common than the assertion 
 that his music was devoid of tonality. It is 
 now beginning to be recognized that even those 
 harmonic connections in his works which once 
 
 * See the writer's " New Lessons in Harmony." To 
 pursue this subject in detail here would take up too much 
 space. 
 
 Peculiarity o} 
 his Harmony.
 
 124 
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 ffit orehestra- 
 tif>n. 
 
 His creative 
 power , and 
 energy and 
 commanding 
 influenc'. 
 
 seemed most forced, strange, and unnatural, 
 are really simple and easily comprehended. 
 He merely discovered, clearly recognized and 
 applied certain natural principles of harmonic 
 relationships which had been overlooked by his 
 predecessors. This is one of the strongest evi- 
 dences of his genius. It was real creative in- 
 sight. 
 
 His orchestration is as original as his har- 
 mony. The most impressive quality of it is a 
 rich sonority, which makes even the colossal 
 Beethoven symphonies sound somewhat small 
 in comparison. Yet, Wagner's orchestration 
 is by no means noisy. It is surprising, when 
 one thinks of it, how sparingly he uses the 
 brass instruments, and how few additions of 
 special instruments he has made to the Bee- 
 thoven orchestra. The overwhelming sonority 
 of his scores seems to be due mainly to the dis- 
 tribution of harmonic elements, and" to the rich- 
 ness and variety of the chords themselves. It 
 shows what can be done by a great master 
 with resources which, in the hands of a com- 
 monplace composer, would produce only insig- 
 nificant effects. 
 
 Whatever we may think of Wagner's the- 
 ories, or of certain details in them; whether he 
 was or was not more or less one-sided; whether 
 he did or did not exaggerate this or that truth 
 at the expense of others which will sooner or 
 later claim and obtain recognition, the facts 
 will always remain that he created some of the 
 most important and effective art-works the 
 world has yet seen, that he occupied a most 
 commanding position during a large part of 
 the present century, and that he possessed an 
 intellect and a creative power never surpassed
 
 GERMAN OPERA. 
 
 125 
 
 and seldom equaled in the world's history 
 until now. 
 
 He won worldly success, also. Failing a 
 second time in Paris, after he left Switzerland, 
 he turned again to Germany, made his way 
 gradually, and in 1864 was called to Munich 
 by Ludwig II, who had just acceded to the 
 throne of Bavaria. From that time until his 
 death he enjoyed the support of his royal pa- 
 tron, he outlived the worst of the opposition to 
 his works, he actually got a special theatre 
 built at Bayreuth, a little remote town, had it 
 fitted according to his own ideas for the pro- 
 duction of his own works, and thither the best 
 and most intelligent musicians and connoisseurs 
 flocked from all over the world to hear his 
 music-dramas. In that theatre the orchestra 
 and conductor are out of sight, the auditorium 
 is in gloom, and the whole attention of the 
 hearer is concentrated on the drama enacted 
 before him on the stage. Recalls are unknown ; 
 each singer devotes himself exclusively to the 
 interpretation of the drama ; in short, it is a 
 temple where art alone is worshipped and 
 where self-seeking vanity is sacrilege. 
 
 The man who achieved such results may 
 have made mistakes ; he had his errors, follies, 
 weaknesses; but he also had splendid, noble 
 qualities, he believed in his ideals, he had the 
 courage of his convictions, faith in himself, 
 indomitable energy, perseverance and courage. 
 He made the world go his way at last, and his 
 achievements are a permanent enrichment of 
 the world's intellectual and spiritual life. 
 
 Sis worldly 
 success. 
 
 Sayreufh 
 1876. 
 
 Kummarv
 
 126 
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 QUESTIONS. 
 
 In what city was the earliest advance made towards the 
 production of real German opera? 
 
 Name one of the most important composers there give 
 dates, at least approximately, and give some account of 
 his character and work. 
 
 Name other composers of that city. 
 
 What is a " Sing spiel " ? 
 
 Give an account of Mozart's work. 
 
 Give dates of his birth and death. 
 
 What opera did Beethoven write? 
 
 Did it involve any new principles of dramatic compo- 
 sition ? 
 
 What is the general tone and spirit of it? 
 
 Give dates of Beethoven's birth and death? 
 
 Who gave the first effective impulse toward the produc- 
 tion of German opera ? 
 
 Give dates of his birth and death. 
 
 What opera produced this result? 
 
 In what year was it composed and where ? 
 
 Name the two other great operas of this composer? 
 
 What great period of musical art begins with Weber? 
 
 State, as clearly as you can, the difference between the 
 "classical" and "romantic" ideals. 
 
 What periods of history have been specially favorable to 
 the development of "romantic" art and literature and why ? 
 
 What era gave rise to romantic literature and music in 
 Germany? 
 
 Name two of Weber's greatest successors and their most 
 important works. 
 
 In whose work has German opera culminated? 
 
 Give dates of Wagner's birth and death. 
 
 Give some account of his mental activity in his child- 
 hood and youth and of his education. 
 
 In what cities was he conductor of opera during hit 
 apprentice period ? 
 
 What was his first important opera ? 
 
 To what city did he go to get it performed? 
 
 By what route? 
 
 Describe his fortunes there. 
 
 What was his second great opera ? 
 
 Where were his third and fourth written and ho\? came 
 he there ?
 
 GERMAN OPERA. 
 
 127 
 
 What were they, and what was their fate ? 
 
 How came he to leave Dresden ? 
 
 Where and how did he spend the next period of his 
 life? 
 
 Where did he live from 1864 to 1883 ? 
 
 Name his remaining operas. 
 
 Give some account of the Bayreuth Theatre. 
 
 Give an account of Wagner's theory of the music-drama. 
 
 Describe the peculiarities of structure in his later works 
 
 What are the most striking innovations in Wagner'*- 
 harmony ? 
 
 Of his orchestration ? 
 
 Give a brief summary of his character, work and place 
 in musical history.
 
 Italian. Pre- 
 dominance of 
 the formal 
 element. 
 
 French and 
 
 German. Pre~ 
 
 dominance of 
 
 the dramatic 
 
 element. 
 
 LESSON XIV. 
 
 THE OPERA: SUMMARY AND OUTLOOK. 
 
 THE music-drama, started in Italy almost 
 three centuries ago, has developed along two 
 great lines. In Italy its course was in the 
 direction of musical form. The musical part 
 of the opera was exalted at the expense of the 
 dramatic element, with the inevitable result of 
 making the singers eventually the ruling per- 
 sonages of the opera. Vocal attainments and 
 vocal display naturally and inevitably became 
 the prominent feature; singers were no longer 
 interpreters of a dramatic work, and Italian 
 opera was degraded from the ennobling aims 
 of the drama to a mere entertainment. It cul- 
 minated, so far as this tendency is concerned, 
 in the brilliant, hollow, showy but enticing 
 operas of Rossini. 
 
 Verdi's tendencies have been toward higher 
 aims, and there are not wanting signs that 
 Italian opera is to be regenerated, largely 
 through the influence of Germany and espe- 
 cially of Wagner. 
 
 The other line was that looking toward dra- 
 matic truthfulness of expression as the true 
 aim of opera, and making the musical element 
 subordinate to this end. To the French be- 
 longs the credit of keeping this ideal alive 
 when Italy had lost it, and for a century or 
 more before there was any independent national 
 opera elsewhere. As regards this, its true 
 ideal, French opera culminates in the works 
 of Gluck. Meyerbeer, the greatest Parisian 
 favorite since Gluck, among composers of grand 
 128
 
 THE OPERA; SUMMARY AND OUTLOOK, 
 
 129 
 
 opera, was nearly as insincere and as con- 
 sciencless as Rossini himself, and contributed 
 in no small degree to the degradation of French 
 taste. Ballet, scenic display, sensationalism, 
 these are but too prevalent now in French 
 grand opera, and as for comic opera, one needs 
 only to mention Offenbach to be conscious of 
 how low French taste for "amusement" has 
 fallen. But Gounod and Saint-Saens, at least, 
 are redeeming elements of a high class, and 
 there are indications of radical improvement. 
 
 The honor of developing opera in the line of 
 the true music-drama passed over to Germany 
 about 1820. The two great names are Weber 
 and Wagner, in which last it has reached a 
 height the immensity of which we cannot yet 
 fairly estimate and beyond which we cannot yet 
 see. No one can prophesy the future of German 
 opera. There are signs, however, that serious 
 aims in opera are not to be given up. Anton 
 Rubinstein's " Nero " is a work whose merits 
 are highly extolled, and Hermann Goetz's 
 (1840-1876) "Taming of the Shrew" was an 
 admirable work, and gave great promise of 
 what might have been but for the untimely death 
 of its author. But probably little remains for 
 young composers, at present, except to imitate 
 Wagner. Such periods as his are commonly 
 followed by periods of rest and a lying fallow 
 of the creative imagination before another great 
 period of production can come. Minds like 
 Wagner's appear only at rare intervals. 
 
 The field of comic opera and of operetta has 
 been well worked in Germany, and especially in 
 Vienna, which pleasure-loving city fairly vies 
 with Paris in its craving for amusement. Resi- 
 dent composers have not been slow to provide 
 
 Anton 
 
 Rubinstein 
 
 Hermann 
 
 Ooetz. 
 
 Viennese 
 
 composers of 
 
 operetta.
 
 130 
 
 THE OPERA: SUMMARY AND OUTLOOK. 
 
 Xlcolat. 
 
 Opera in 
 
 l.n'jlau'1. 
 
 it, and the operettas of Suppe, Strauss, Genee 
 and Milloecker have nearly or quite crowded 
 out Offenbach's in Europe and in America. In 
 North Germany there has been less of this sort 
 of work, composers there rarely descending be- 
 low comedy to farce. Nicolai's ' Merry Wives 
 of Windsor " is a fair example of the type of 
 comic opera in North Germany, as Suppe's 
 " Boccacio " is of the Viennese operetta. All 
 this activity on the lighter side of the musical 
 stage has gone on side by side with the serious 
 work of Wagner, and there are no signs of its 
 diminution. 
 
 In England there has been no original school 
 of opera. English composers of more or less 
 talent have followed on the lines of Italian, 
 French and German composers, and have pro- 
 duced works of some merit, though it would be 
 difficult to mention any such works that are 
 likely to prove lasting. The two most impor- 
 tant of the older names are M. W. Balfe (1808- 
 1870), who wrote a considerable number of 
 operas, the best of which was " The Bohemian 
 Girl," and W. V. Wallace (1814-1865), whose 
 best opera was " Maritana." To these names 
 should be added two foreigners, long resident 
 in London, Sir Michal Costa (1810-1 884), and 
 Sir Julius Benedict (1804-1885). 
 
 Sir Arthur S. Sullivan (born 1842) is now 
 extremely conspicuous in the field of the oper- 
 etta. He owes a great deal to his librettist, 
 W. S. Gilbert, who is an adept in the manufac- 
 ture of droll absurdities in rhyme. His libret- 
 tos are wholly free from the risky situations 
 improper suggestions which characterize 
 
 Balfe. 
 Wallace. 
 Oosta. 
 Benedict. 
 
 and 
 
 so many of the Parisian and Viennese operettas, 
 a fact to which they doubtless owe no small
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 131 
 
 portion of their popularity among the best 
 classes in England and America. Sullivan is 
 not a composer of any marked originality. His 
 scores are full of reminiscences and borrowed 
 ideas. But both he and Gilbert are clever 
 writers and skillful purveyors of amusing trifles, 
 and have won an enormous popularity. Their 
 H. M. S. Pinafore was their first successful 
 operetta. It had a great run in England and 
 an enormous one in this country. It was fol- 
 lowed by Patience, lolanthe and The Mikado, 
 all of which have been successful. 
 
 Frederick H. Cowen (born 1852) is an opera 
 composer of promise, who has done excel- 
 lent work in the field of instrumental music. 
 A. G. Mackenzie (born 1847) has done nothing 
 yet in the field of opera, but his other work 
 suggests that he might be successful here also. 
 England has at present a number of thoughtful, 
 earnest, native composers ; but there is nothing 
 to indicate that they are about to originate a 
 national school of opera, unless, indeed, we look 
 on the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas as a 
 national type. The librettos, at least, could 
 have been produced nowhere but in England. 
 
 In America, thus far, there have been but few 
 attempts at operatic composition, and none of 
 them have yet won a pronounced success.
 
 132 
 
 THE OPERA: SUMMARY AND OUTLOOK. 
 
 QUESTIONS. 
 
 What were the two great lines along which opera 
 developed? 
 
 What was the result of the Italian method ? 
 
 In whom did this tendency culminate? 
 
 What great Italian composer has shown himself some- 
 what superior to this tendency? 
 
 Have the French maintained their original standard 
 of opera? 
 
 Name two prominent composers whose influence tended 
 to degrade it. 
 
 Who adopted the French ideal and improved on what 
 that nation had done ? 
 
 Name two great contemporaries of Wagner. 
 
 Name some of the Viennese composers of operetta. 
 
 Name the prominent English composers of opera ano 
 operetta.
 
 LESSON XY. 
 
 ORATORIO, CANTATA, PASSION MUSIC AND SACRED 
 MUSIC FROM 1700 TO THE PRESENT. 
 
 MOST of the opera composers of the seven- 
 teenth and eighteenth centuries wrote more or 
 less church music, and many of them wrote 
 also oratorios and secular cantatas. There was a 
 gradual broadening of the forms and a growing 
 freedom of treatment until the oratorio culmi- 
 nated, as regards perfection of form and dignity 
 and nobility of content in the works of George 
 Frederick Haendel (1685-1759). He was a 
 Saxon by birth, showed musical giits in early 
 childhood, mastered all or nearly all the musical 
 knowledge of his time while he was still a youth r 
 spent some time in the Hamburg opera, went to 
 Italy for what he could learn there, then became 
 conductor and composer in Hanover, but soon 
 went to London, where he spent the rest of his 
 life. He wrote a good deal of music for the 
 organ, harpsicnord and violin, but devoted him- 
 self mainly to the Italian opera, on the model 
 of Alessandro Scarlatti. He was composer, 
 conductor and theatre manager, all in one, and 
 wrote forty-six operas, which survive now only 
 in detached arias. His career as an opera com- 
 poser closed in 1740. He had failed two or three 
 times, owing to quarrels with the nobility, the 
 only patrons of the opera at that time, and 
 thenceforth devoted himself to oratorio exclu- 
 sively. He had already done some work in this 
 field. Esther, Deborah, Athalia, and the cantata 
 Ads and Galatea antedate his withdrawal from 
 the opera, and so do his Anthems and the Det- 
 
 133 
 
 Haendel 
 
 1GS5-1759.
 
 134 
 
 ORATORIO, CANTATA, PASSION, SACRED MUST 
 
 His great 
 oratorios. 
 
 Distinction 
 
 between 
 " oratorios," 
 "sacred 
 
 aaUatcu" 
 and" secular 
 cantatas." 
 
 Israel in 
 Baypt. 
 
 The Messiah. 
 
 tingen Te Deum. His greatest oratorios, written 
 in the full maturity of his powers are The 
 Messiah and Israel in Egypt. Others which 
 approximate these are Judas Mac cabaeus, Saul. 
 Samson, Joseph, Joshua, Susanna, Solomon, 
 Theodora and Jephtha. The Messiah and Israel 
 in Egypt are the only ones which employ scrip- 
 tural words exclusively. The others have tests 
 based on scriptural stories, written by con- 
 temporary authors of reputation, and might 
 appropriately be called " sacred cantatas." " Ora- 
 torios," " sacred cantatas " and u secular canta- 
 tas" have precisely the same form, differing 
 only in the character of the words. All three are 
 written for solos, chorus and orchestra. The 
 solo parts consist of recitatives and arias, 
 then there are commonly duets, trios, quartets, 
 etc., for solo voices. But the most characteristic 
 feature is the chorus, a large part of the genius 
 and skill of the composer being spent on the 
 choral writing. Israel in Egypt is a chain of 
 colossal choruses, many of them double chor- 
 uses, for two choirs. The solo work is compara- 
 tively slight. It is given much less frequently 
 than The Messiah, which has become the com- 
 mon property of all English speaking men and 
 is now given every Christmastide in many places 
 in England and America. It owes its enormous 
 popularity largely to Haendel's happy selection 
 of his text from the Holy Scripture. He had a 
 special aptitude for appreciating and expressing 
 the sublime, and The Messiah, perhaps even 
 more than Israel in Egypt, shows him at his 
 best. It was written in an incredibly short time 
 and with the greatest facility, and everywhere 
 displays the hand of a great master. The steady 
 march of his magnificent choruses has never
 
 LESSONS /JV MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 135 
 
 ceased to uplift and to inspire the souls of 
 thousands, and the noble climaxes of the Halle- 
 lujah chorus and Worthy is the Lamb have never 
 been surpassed in choral writing. There are 
 tender passages, too, such as the part beginning 
 " Behold the Lamb of God." The contralto 
 aria " He was despised " and the short tenor 
 aria " Behold and see " are unsurpassed in 
 pathos, and the noble soprano air" I know that 
 my Redeemer liveth " is perhaps as immortal as 
 the sublime hope and faith of which it is the 
 worthy expression. There is a good deal, how- 
 ever, in The Messiah which betrays the Italian 
 opera composer. In the soprano air " Rejoice 
 greatly, "and in numerous other portions of the 
 work there are roulades and fioriture which are 
 much more suggestive of solo display than of 
 devout worship. Notwithstanding the fact that 
 even these portions of the work correspond in 
 their general emotional tone to the sentiment 
 of the text, they are largely made up of ele- 
 ments which are temporary and according to 
 the fashions of the time rather than permanent 
 and universal. It is probable that this will 
 become more and more clear to the general 
 musical perception as men become gradually 
 familiar with the noble, serious music of Wag- 
 ner's Lohengrin and Parsifal, and that The 
 Messiah, as a whole, will suffer by comparison. 
 There are not wanting signs that the time will 
 come when the musical world may possibly 
 receive more religious inspiration from Wagner 
 than from Haendel, though this opinion must 
 now seem extremely heretical. 
 
 The Passion Music differs from oratorio, first, 
 in confining itself in its selection of Scriptural 
 texts to those portions of the Gospels narrating 
 
 Influence of 
 Italian opera 
 
 inthf. 
 Messiah. 
 
 Cnmparison of 
 
 War/ner with 
 
 Haendel. 
 
 Passion 
 Music.
 
 186 
 
 ORATORIO, CANTATA, PASSION, SACRED MUSIC. 
 
 f. S. Bach, 
 
 1685-1750. 
 
 St. Matthew, 
 Passion 
 Music. 
 
 the suffering and death of Christ; and second, 
 in combining with the Scriptural narrative solos 
 expressive of the emotions of the individual 
 believer and choruses to express the feelings of 
 the multitude. Both these latter have words 
 not taken from the Scriptures. Most, if not 
 all, the examples known were written for actual 
 use in church service on Good Frida}'. 
 
 The great master in this form was Johann 
 Sebastian Bach (1685-1750). Like Haendel, 
 he was a Saxon by birth, began his musical edu- 
 cation in early childhood, mastered the harpsi- 
 chord, violin and organ, became the greatest 
 organist and fugue-writer of his time, perhaps of 
 all time, and finished his life as organist and 
 choir-master in the Church of St. Thomas in 
 Leipzig. This position he occupied for twenty- 
 seven years, writing hundreds of motets, canta- 
 tas, chorals, etc., for the use of his choir. He 
 is said to have written five separate examples 
 of" Passion Music," the greatest of them being 
 the "Passion Music according to St. Matthew," 
 a colossal work in every respect and a perma- 
 nent embodiment of this phase of Christian 
 faith and worship. It was first given at the 
 Good Friday service of 1729, and then was laid 
 aside for a whole century. It was revived by 
 Mendelssohn and his friend Edward Devrient 
 in 1829, and is now given publicly every year 
 in Leipzig and elsewhere. 
 
 Not only did the Passion Music culminate 
 with Bach's great work, but it seems to have 
 ended with it. Since that time, so far as the 
 present writer's recollection goes, there has 
 been no art-work of importance of this kind. 
 The oratorio, however, has been successfully 
 cultivated. The most conspicuous examples of
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 137 
 
 it since Haendel have been The Creation, by 
 Joseph Haydn (1732-1809), which perhaps 
 ought to be called a sacred cantata, and the two 
 oratorios St. Paul and Elijah, by Felix Men- 
 delssohn Bartholdy (1809-1847). The latter, 
 especially, is of a highly dramatic character. 
 Unlike The Messiah, it illustrates the progress 
 of a story, and is a real music-drama, without 
 action or scenic accessories. Both musically 
 and dramatically, it is of a very high order of 
 merit, and its climaxes are exceedingly effective. 
 So is that of the first part of St. Paul. These 
 two oratorios would be sufficient to give Men- 
 delssohn a permanent place in musical history, 
 if he had written nothing else. 
 
 Since Mendelssohn a good many oratorios of 
 merit have been written. Conspicuous among 
 them are Naaman, by Sir Michael Costa ; 
 Christus, by Fredrick Kiel (1821-1885), late 
 professor of composition in the High School of 
 music in Berlin ; Calvary, by Ludwig Spohr 
 (1784-1859), and in America, St. Peter, by 
 John K. Paine (born 1839), professor of music 
 in Harvard University. 
 
 Related to this are sacred art-forms intended 
 for concert performance rather than for church 
 service. Such are the great mass in B minor, 
 by J. S. Bach, some of the masses of Mozart, 
 particularly his Requiem, those of Beethoven, 
 especially the great Missa Solennis in D major, 
 Rossini's Stabat Mater, a brilliant and effective, 
 but insincere and non-religious work, Cheru- 
 bini's " Requiem, Berlioz's Requiem, Yerdi's 
 ' Manzoni " Requiem, etc. 
 
 The masses for the Catholic church service 
 have been numerous, but none of them have 
 ever approximated the dignity, nobility and 
 
 LESSON XV. 
 Haydn. 
 
 Mendelssohn. 
 
 Cb.ita. 
 Kiel. 
 Spohr. 
 Paine. 
 
 Concert, 
 Mitssev, etc. 
 
 Church Musto
 
 138 
 
 Jforitz 
 flauptman\ 
 
 Crtylhh ana 
 
 A**rt/ in 
 
 CAx^Cft ,\ \tsic 
 
 ORATORIO, CANTATA, PASSION, SACRED HUSIC. 
 
 serene religious feeling of Palestrina. Many 
 modern masses, especially by Italian and 
 French composers, are showy, false and mere- 
 tricious to the last degree. The Lutheran 
 Church music is based on the choral. Its art- 
 forms consist mainly in motets and short sacred 
 cantatas. Bach wrote them in great numbers, 
 and most German composers since his time 
 have written more or less of them, especially 
 motets. Moritz Hauptmann (1792-1868) one 
 of Bach's successors in his Leipzig post, was 
 one of the best of motet composers, distinguish- 
 ing himself in this field of composition more 
 than in any other, and surpassing most if not 
 all others in it. In the Anglican Church, the 
 Anthem is the most important form, and well- 
 trained English composers, from the madrigal 
 composers down, have written anthems for the 
 church service. The other Protestant sects 
 have mostly eschewed the chants of the Angli- 
 can Church, but have largely adopted her hymn- 
 tunes and in part her anthems. They have 
 also borrowed motets, etc., from German sources. 
 Besides this, many congregations use frequent 
 arrangements from operas, secular songs, etc., 
 set to sacred words, not always in the best 
 taste. The hymn-tunes and especially the 
 Sunday School tunes of this country are^ often 
 mere jingle, wholly unrelated to true religious 
 feeling and corrupting to the taste of those 
 who habitually use them. But there are also 
 excellent tunes in use, and on the whole, the 
 tendency is probably toward better and higher 
 things. Among our best native church music 
 is the work of Dudley Buck, whose two motette 
 collections have exercised an elevating influence 
 on American church music.
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 139 
 
 The secular cantata has been cultivated from 
 the time of the birth of the oratorio. Bach 
 and Haendel wrote cantatas, Haydn wrote 
 The Seasons, Mendelssohn wrote Antigone and 
 others, Schumann wrote Paradise and the Peri, 
 based on Moore's " Lalla Rookh," and the ex- 
 amples since are too numerous to mention. 
 Bei'lioz's splendid Damnation of Faust belongs 
 to this species. Conspicuous among later 
 German works are Max Bruch's (born 1838) 
 Lay of the Bell and Frithjof, Heinrich 
 Hoffman's (born 1842) Cinderella, Johannes 
 Brahms' (born 1833) Einaldo, Song of Fate, 
 and others, and Anton Dvorak's (born 1841) 
 The Spectre's Bride. In England A. C. Macken- 
 zie's (born 1847) Hose of Sharon is perhaps the 
 best work of this kind. Sir Arthur S. Sullivan 
 (born 1842) has written The Prodigal Son and a 
 setting of Longfellow's Golden Legend, but the 
 latter is inferior in every respect to that of our 
 own Dudley Buck (born 1839), who has also 
 written The Legend of Don Munio,&i\d a " Cen- 
 tennial " cantata. J. K. Paine's Oedipus is an 
 excellent work. Most of these works are 
 essentially operas without action. 
 
 Rrc.ular 
 Cantatas
 
 140 
 
 ORATORIO, CANTATA, PASSION, SACRED MUSIC. 
 
 QUESTIONS. 
 
 In whose works did the oratorio culminate ? 
 
 Name his two greatest oratorios. 
 
 How came Haendel to devote himself to writing ora- 
 torios ? 
 
 Describe the distinctions between " oratorios " and 
 sacred and secular " cantatas." 
 
 Tell what you know of the peculiarities of The Messiah 
 and Israel in Egypt. 
 
 How does the " Passion Music " differ from " oratorio"? 
 
 Who wrote the greatest work in this kind ? 
 
 What do you know of him and of his work? 
 
 Who wrote The Creation f 
 
 What do you know of Mendelssohn's oratorios? 
 
 Name them. 
 
 Name some other oratorios and their composers. 
 
 Name some great masses intended for concert perform- 
 ance. 
 
 Name one of the greatest motet composers. 
 
 Describe the condition of English and American sacred 
 music. 
 
 Name an important American composer in this field, 
 
 Name several prominent composers of cantatas and theb 
 principal works.
 
 LESSON XVI. 
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SONG. 
 
 SONGS were among the earlie-st, probably the 
 \ery earliest, manifestations of what could be 
 called music. The impulse to express feeling 
 vocally is universal. All the world over women 
 have sung lullabys to their babes, and men have 
 given vocal expression to emotional excitement. 
 The feeling for rhythm, too, is universal. The 
 monotonous chants of savages naturally and 
 spontaneously fall into measured cadences, and 
 their war songs are accompanied by the rhyth- 
 mical beating of drums, gongs, etc. Out of 
 this natural feeling for melody and rhythm 
 grew both lyric poetry and the music to which 
 it was sung. The early song is, in fact, com- 
 monly a four line ballad stanza, fitting exactly 
 to an eight-measure musical period having two 
 four-measure clauses (or sections), each sub- 
 divided into two phrases of two measures each. 
 The plan of such a period then is as follows : 
 4 meas. clause. 4 meas. clause. 
 
 1st Phrase. 2d Phrase. 3d Phrase. 4th Phrase. 
 
 The first phrase rhymes with the third and 
 the fourth with the second, i. e., the third is a 
 nearly or quite exact repetition of the first, and 
 the fourth repeats the second, but commonly 
 with a different close. Quite often, however, 
 the fourth differs from the second more than 
 merely in the close. The two clauses stand 
 in the relation of antecedent and consequent 
 (Thesis and Antithesis). This simple period- 
 
 141 
 
 Genesis of 
 Song. 
 
 Metrical 
 
 Form.. 
 
 The simple 
 period.
 
 142 
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SONG. 
 
 Two period* 
 
 with 
 
 connecting 
 link, (refrain.) 
 
 Development 
 of Form. 
 
 The elaborate 
 
 long of the 
 
 Romantic 
 
 epoch. 
 
 Schubert, 
 1797-1828. 
 
 form, applied to the first stanza of a ballad, 
 used to be applied equally to all the rest, the 
 same tune being used for all the stanzas. 
 Sometimes there is a short refrain of two lines 
 after the stanza, and then the stanza is repeated. 
 An excellent example of this is the ancient 
 French tune " Malbrook," known in this coun- 
 try as "We Won't Go Home Till Morning." 
 Here the two-phrase refrain is in the nature of 
 a connecting link between two repetitions of 
 the main period, and the whole is the germ of 
 what some writers call the " First Rondo- 
 Form." These simple formations were more or 
 less extended as Form was developed in the, 
 hands of the great masters. The arias of the 
 great operas and oratorios were elaborate 
 forms, either in the smaller rondo-form or in 
 the composite primary forms, and the more 
 elaborate songs of Mozart, and especially of 
 Beethoven, were built on a similiar plan. But 
 it ought to be noted that the more elaborate of 
 these songs and arias were often, if not gener- 
 ally, set to words not cast in the ballad mould. 
 Even the great masters, when they treated the 
 ballad stanza, were apt to make a single air do 
 duty for a good many stanzas. 
 
 With the rise of the romantic epoch came 
 the feeling that every portion of the song ought 
 to have its special, appropriate form of emo- 
 tional expression in music. The man who once 
 for all established this principle in song-writing, 
 and made the emotional character of the sepa- 
 rate stanzas the governing principle in the 
 music, was Franz Peter Schubert (1797-1828). 
 In spite of what had been done before him, his 
 work was so important, both in quantity and in 
 quality, that he is regarded as the creator of
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 143 
 
 the German art-song, as opposed to the folk- 
 song, or popular ballad. In Schubert's songs, 
 the instrumental portion takes a much more 
 prominent place than in the folk-song and in 
 the songs of the masters who had preceded him. 
 It is no longer a mere accompaniment ; it is an 
 essential portion of the emotional interpreta- 
 tion of the poem, has independent melodic 
 value, and frequently takes the principal mel- 
 ody, the vocal part being subordinate. In this 
 respect, Schubert's innnovations in the song 
 are closely analogous to those of Wagner in 
 the opera, where the orchestral portion is as 
 important as the vocal, or even more so. Schu- 
 bert wrote some six hundred songs, and set to 
 music a large part of the German lyric poetry 
 known in his day, and no small portion of the 
 English. He was a creative genius of the first 
 rank as regards spontaneity in the invention 
 of beautiful and characteristic melodies, and 
 his work constitutes an art-treasure of perma 
 nent value. 
 
 Following him came the great romanticists, 
 Mendelssohn (1809-1847), Schumann (1810- 
 1856), and later, Robert Franz (born 1815), a 
 most original and charming composer. 
 
 Among the greatest of living song-writers 
 are Anton Rubinstein (born 1830), and Johannes 
 Brahms (born 1833). There is a host of song 
 composers of merit, both contemporary with 
 these men and younger than they. They are 
 far too numerous to mention, and mention is 
 the less needed, as none of them have made any 
 innovations on the principles of the romantic 
 writers. They have simply enriched musical 
 literature with numerous songs, more or less 
 excellent. 
 
 Sfendelssotm. 
 
 Schumann. 
 
 Robert Frana 
 
 Bubinstein. 
 rahm.
 
 144 
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SONG. 
 
 LXSSOH XVI. 
 
 QUESTIONS. 
 
 In what impulse of human nature did vocal music take 
 its rise ? 
 
 What determined the form of the simple period ? 
 
 Give plan. 
 
 Do lyric popular ballads commonly have more than one 
 tune for the different stanzas? 
 
 Give an example of ballad stanzas with a refrain. 
 
 Of what art-form is this the germ? 
 
 What is the essential difference between the lyric ballad 
 and the art-song, as developed in the romantic period? 
 
 What was the feeling which led to the development of 
 the art-song ? 
 
 Who was the great composer of such songs ? 
 
 Give dates. 
 
 What is the relation of the instrumental to the vocal 
 portion of Schubert's songs ? 
 
 Give some account of his work, both in quantity and 
 quality. 
 
 Give names of later song composers of the first rank.
 
 LESSON" XVII. 
 
 INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC FROM 1700 TO THE PRESENT. 
 
 THE germs of the symphony, as we have 
 seen, were in the opera overtures of Lully and 
 of Alessandro Scarlatti. The three parts of 
 which they were composed became separated 
 after the overture began to be used as a sepa- 
 rate instrumental piece in concert performances, 
 and thus it became the modern symphony. The 
 sonata, originally a piece in one movement, 
 also took on the same form as the symphony.* 
 
 J. S. Bach and Haendel cast a great deal of 
 their harpsichord music in the form of suites, 
 generally consisting of six or eight dance tunes, 
 contrasted with one another in tempo, but all 
 in the same key. Johann Kuhnau (1667-1722), 
 Bach's predecessor at Leipzig, was the first man 
 who used the title " sonata " for his harpsi- 
 chord music. Domenico Scarlatti (1683-1757), 
 son of Alessandro, was a great harpsichord vir- 
 tuoso. He wrote numerous " sonatas " in one 
 movement for his instrument, which differed 
 little, if any, from the single movements of 
 Bach's suites. All the composers of the time 
 wrote fugues, Bach's " Well Tempered Clavi- 
 chord " and his organ fugues being the culmi- 
 nating point of this style. 
 
 The first to write sonatas for the harpsi- 
 chord in three movements was Carl Phillip Em- 
 manuel Bach (1711-1788), son of J. S., for a 
 long time court-pianist to Frederick the Great 
 of Prussia, and afterwards settled in Hamburg. 
 
 * For a fuller exposition of the sonata, see the writer's 
 " History of Piano-Forte Music." 
 
 145 
 
 Origin of th> 
 symphony. 
 
 The Suite. 
 
 The Sonata. 
 Jiuhnau. 
 
 D. Scarlatti. 
 
 C. f. . Barn 
 1711-1788.
 
 146 
 
 LMIKMI XVIL 
 
 Hm/dn, 
 
 Mozart, 
 1766-1791. 
 
 INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC, PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 His style differs greatly from that of his father, 
 and he is the real creator of the modern sonata, 
 for Haydn, Mozart, and even Beethoven mod- 
 eled on him. The French contemporaries of 
 Bach and Haendel, Rameau, Couperin, Mar- 
 chand, etc., have been referred to in a previous 
 lesson. 
 
 After Emmanuel Bach had outlined the so- 
 nata, it was taken up by Joseph Haydn (1732- 
 1809) in Vienna. He wrote a great number of 
 piano-forte sonatas, trios, string quartets and 
 symphonies (one hundred and eighteen of the 
 latter), all in the same form, and showed so 
 much inventive genius, originality and skill 
 that he is by far the most prominent figure of 
 his time in instrumental music. His work 
 marks an epoch in this field. 
 
 W. A. Mozart (1756-1791) lived during 
 Haydn's career, had the benefit of his work, 
 possessed a splendid originality, and surpassed 
 Haydn in the development of his forms, and in 
 the richness, fulness and variety of his instru- 
 mental combinations. The most of Haydn's 
 symphonies were written for a small orchestra, 
 made up of the usual string quintet (first and 
 second violins, viola, violoncello and double 
 bass), two oboes and two horns. Mozart added 
 to these two flutes, two clarionets, two fagotti 
 (bassoons), two trumpets and two kettle-drums. 
 Haydn's later symphonies, after Mozart's work 
 was published, approximated his in fulness. 
 Both had the four great families of instruments : 
 viz., 1, stringed instruments played with a bow ; 
 2, wood-wind ; 3, brass; and 4, instruments of 
 percussion. In his three greatest symphonies, 
 the "Jupiter" in C, the G'minor,and the E-flat 
 major, Mozart not only developed the symphony
 
 LESSONS TN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 147 
 
 form to its utmost limits, but enriched the world 
 with beautiful instrumental combinations greatly 
 in advance of Haydn, and hardly surpassed by 
 even Beethoven himself. Mozart wrote a vast 
 quantity of piano music, chamber music, songs, 
 and orchestral music, besides his operas, church 
 music, and forty-one symphonies. 
 
 Ludwig von Beethoven (1770-1821) was the 
 next great symphony writer, although he was 
 much less prolific than Mozart or Haydn. He 
 wrote only nine symphonies, the last closing 
 with a movement for solos, chorus, and orches- 
 tra. He accepted the form of the symphony 
 as completed by Mozart. He added to Mozart's 
 orchestra two more horns and three trombones, 
 a combination now known as" grand orchestra," 
 and accepted by all symphony composers since. 
 The piccolo and contra-bassoon he used but 
 rarely. His acknowledged superiority to all 
 other symphony writers before and since lies 
 in the nobility, elevation and depth of the emo- 
 tional content of his works. They reveal a 
 moral earnestness and a high spiritual quality 
 not to be found before him, nor after him until 
 we come to Wagner. His chamber music, his 
 church music, his one opera and his piano-forte 
 sonatas display the same nobility of character, 
 the same serious thoughtfulness and the same 
 consummate mastery of style. 
 
 Franz Schubert (1797-1827), the great song- 
 writer, also wrote nine symphonies and a great 
 quantity of piano-forte and chamber music, 
 very little of which was performed during his 
 lifetime. His greatest work is the ninth sym- 
 phony, in C major. All these works are charac- 
 terized by spontaneity, freshness of melodic 
 invention, exquisite beauty of harmony, refine-
 
 148 
 
 INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC, PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 Weber 
 
 Hummel. 
 
 Other 
 
 instrumental 
 composers. 
 
 ment,and,in the chamber and orchestral works, 
 by extreme beauty in the instrumental combina- 
 tions and contrasts. Most of them are prolix 
 and lack mental concentration, and in general 
 there is more vividness and exuberance of im- 
 agination than intellectual restraint and self- 
 control. He shows the dawning influence of 
 the romantic period even more than Beetho- 
 ven, who, more than any other composer, com- 
 bines in himself tho superior excellences of 
 both the classical and the romantic ideals. 
 
 The opera overtures of C. M. von Weber, the 
 great contemporary of Beethoven and Schu- 
 bert, are instrumental compositions of high ex- 
 cellence in every respect. They are romantic 
 in spirit; but as regards form, do not depart 
 from classical models. His piano-forte music 
 is of less importance. 
 
 Next to these three, their most reno-wned 
 contemporary in the field of instrumental music 
 was J. N. Hummel (1778-1837). In his time 
 he had a great reputation as a pianist and a 
 composer of piano-forte and chamber music, 
 and some of his concertos and chamber compo- 
 sitions are still played. Other composers of 
 distinction in this field were Muzio dementi 
 (1752-1832), Pleyel, Dussek, Steibelt, Woelfl, 
 Cramer, Field, Hies, Kalkbrenr.er, Onslow, 
 Moscheles, Czerny.* 
 
 These names bring us up to and even beyond 
 the opening of the romantic epoch, for Mos- 
 cheles and Czerny outlived most of the great 
 romantic composers. The four years, 1809- 
 1813, ushered into the world five great com- 
 posers, whose work, taken together, constitutes 
 
 * See the writer's " History of Piano-Forte Music," for a 
 more definite account of these men and their work.
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 149 
 
 the romantic epoch. These were Felix Men- 
 delssohn Bartholdy (1809-1847), Frederic 
 Chopin (1810-1849), Robert Schumann (1810- 
 1856), Franz Liszt (1811-1886) and Richard 
 Wagner (1813-1883). To these names must 
 be added that of Hector Berlioz (1803-1869), 
 who wrote in the spirit of extreme romanticism, 
 but his work was almost isolated, met with 
 very little success during his lifetime, and exer- 
 cised comparatively little influence in shaping 
 the course of musical history. His symphonies, 
 " Episode in the Life of an Artist," " Harold in 
 Itaty," and others, are extremely fantastic. 
 Of the others, Wagner's instrumental writing, 
 although of great importance, was almost ex- 
 clusively in his music-dramas, and has already 
 been treated of under the head of German 
 opera. Of the others, Mendelssohn, Schumann 
 and Liszt wrote piano-forte music, chamber 
 music and orchestral music. Chopin's writing, 
 with the exceptions of his two concertos, a few 
 other concerted pieces and some songs, was 
 confined to the piano-forte. The work of these 
 four men has been so fully estimated, especially 
 as regards their piano-forte writing, in the pres- 
 ent writer's " History of Piano-Forte Music," 
 that the subject may be treated briefly here. 
 
 Mendelssohn was, by nature and education, 
 a classical composer. He modeled on the 
 classic writers ; the violence, self-assertion and 
 stormy passion of the extreme romanticists 
 was foreign to his nature and repulsive to his 
 taste. His music is. above all, refined, elegant, 
 graceful.. His style is clear and finished. But 
 he could not escape the influences of his time, 
 and was more or less of a romantic composer, 
 whether he would or no. Probably his greatest 
 
 The R(/mantlc 
 composers. 
 
 Berlioz, 
 
 Mendelssohn, 
 1809-1847.
 
 150 
 
 INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC, PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 Lsso XVII. 
 
 Schumann. 
 
 lBlO-18,%. 
 
 orchestral work is the overture to Shakespeare's 
 "Midsummer Night's Dream," a thoroughly 
 romantic work in every respect. He is roman 
 tic, also, in that he sought, in his overture, 
 " The Hebrides," his " Italian," " Scotch" and 
 " Reformation " symphonies, and in his " Songs 
 Without Words " for the piano-forte, to express 
 emotions connected with definite scenes. He 
 wrote a great deal for the piano-forte and for 
 the organ, and some excellent chamber music, 
 besides his orchestral works. 
 
 Schumann was constitutionally a romanticist, 
 and his natural tendency was fostered by his 
 early reading of the German romantic litera- 
 ture. He was taciturn, but the passion which 
 did not express itself in words or behavior 
 found vent in his music. His songs, his piano- 
 forte works, his chamber music, his symphonies, 
 are characterized by profound feeling, by burn- 
 ing passion, often by headlong impetuosity. 
 His imagination is vivid and powerful, but he 
 has also light and playful fancy. His intellect 
 was characterized by strength and depth, 
 rather than by clearness. His style as a com- 
 poser is bold and original, but often somewhat 
 obscure. This last quality is partly due to his 
 original and peculiar rhythms. He was late 
 in mastering the technic of composition, and 
 never had it at such complete command as did 
 Mendelssohn, whose " Midsummer Night's 
 Dream " overture, perhaps his greatest orches- 
 tral work, was written when he was only seven- 
 teen years of age. 
 
 Schumann wrote several symphonies, an 
 opera, " Genoveva," and some cantatas ; but he 
 will probably live in history by his piano-forte 
 music, especially the Fantasia op. 17, the Etit-
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 151 
 
 des Symphoniques, the Kreisleriana, the Novel- 
 ettes, the Fantasy Pieces and the Forest Scenes, 
 by his songs and his chamber music. Schumann 
 can hardly be said to have originated any new 
 forms ; his forms are adopted or slightly modi- 
 fied from the traditional ones. He is at his best 
 when, using the simpler forms, under no re- 
 straints imposed by an elaborate plan, he gives 
 free rein to his imagination, and allows the 
 stream of his romantic feeling to flow without 
 hindrance. 
 
 Chopin was perhaps the most strikingly 
 original of all the romantic writers except 
 Wagner. His reputation depends exclusively 
 on his piano-forte music. It is characterized 
 by extreme refinement and finish, by elegance 
 and grace, but some of it also by a volcanic 
 passion which knows no restraint but that 
 imposed by an exquisitely refined artistic per- 
 ception. Chopin is profoundly original in his 
 melodies and embellishments, in his harmonies 
 and cadences, and in his applications of the 
 principles of form. Among his greatest works 
 may be named the two concertos, especially the 
 one in E minor, the Etudes, op. 10 and op. 25, 
 some of the Polonaises, especially those in E 
 ilat and in A flat, the Scherzos, the Ballades, 
 the Impromptus and the Fantasie in F minor. 
 But hardly less original and fine are the Noc- 
 turnes, Mazurkas and Preludes and, in truth, he 
 has written almost nothing which would not be 
 sufficient to stamp him as an epoch-making 
 composer. 
 
 Liszt will be known in history as the man 
 who, more than any other, developed the mod- 
 ern piano-forte to its highest capacity, by the 
 demands which his works make on the instru-
 
 152 
 
 INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC, PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 Lnsn* XVI I. 
 
 The 
 Symphonic 
 
 Poem 
 
 compared with 
 the symphony. 
 
 ment, especially as regards sonority. He also 
 ranks as the greatest of piano-forte virtuosi. 
 But he will also be known as the inventor of 
 the " Symphonic Poem," an important modifica- 
 tion of the orchestral symphony. 
 
 The Symphony, as developed by Haydn and 
 Mozart and applied to the highest ends of 
 emotional expression by Beethoven, may be 
 regarded as the culmination of classical form. 
 In its most elaborate form, it consisted of four 
 separate pieces or " movements," contrasted 
 with one another in tempo and in emotional 
 character. One of these movements was always 
 a " sonata-form," * the most elaborate of the 
 different forms of the classical epoch. 
 
 The symphonic poem, on the other hand, is 
 the culmination of the romantic ideal in the 
 field of instrumental music. That ideal de- 
 mands that form shall be subordinate to con- 
 tent ; that the free expression of feeling shall 
 be the first aim and end of music ; and it re- 
 gards form merely as an indispensable means 
 to this end. In the symphony, each separate 
 movement serves to express a separate phase 
 of emotional experience. It comes to an end, 
 the players stop, and the work enters upon an- 
 other phase of feeling, disconnected with what 
 precedes and what follows. But in actual ex- 
 perience, feeling is continuous throughout our 
 waking hours. One emotion fades into another, 
 or is replaced by another, without any break in 
 consciousness. Commonly, each phase of feel- 
 ing is developed from those which went before 
 it ; when it is not, there is either a profound 
 modification of feeling or a change, which may 
 
 *See the chapter on "Form " in the writer's "History 
 of Piano-Forte Music," or any good work on musical form.
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 amount to revolution, by the occurrence of 
 some unexpected event. The symphonic poem 
 seeks to conform itself to these facts of emo- 
 tional experience. Its movements follow each 
 other without break, and it aims to express 
 truthfully not only separate phases of feeling, 
 but the connection and relation of these phases. 
 It discards entirely the classical sonata-form, 
 rondos and dance-forms, such as the scherzo 
 and the minuet, and aims to determine the suc- 
 cession and relation of its musical ideas solely 
 in accordance with the exigencies of emotional 
 expression. Of course, it must and does meet 
 the intellectual and aesthetic requirements of 
 every work of art. It must, in order to be 
 beautiful, meet the demands of unity, variety, 
 symmetry, contrast and climax. But this 
 orderlj- arrangement of ideas is not, as in the 
 classical symphony, predetermined according 
 to a cut-and-dried formal plan, to which the 
 emotional content is subordinate, but is de- 
 pendent on the natural order and succession of 
 the emotions to be expressed. In the sym- 
 phony, the logical order is form first and con- 
 tent second. In the symphonic poem, the logi- 
 cal order is content first and form second. 
 Form is only a means of expressing feeling. 
 
 Perhaps a word may be needed here with ref- 
 erence to the capacity of music to express 
 feeling. No one will doubt that music is 
 capable of expressing and revealing such 
 simple emotional states as pain and pleasure. 
 Every one regards certain music as cheerful, or 
 joyous, or exultant, or martial, or sad, or 
 solemn, or melancholy, etc., as the case may be. 
 But can music express the more complex feel- 
 ings, such as love, hate, anger, jealousy? The
 
 154 
 
 INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC, PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 LESBOS XT II 
 
 Its limits 
 
 "Programme 
 Mule." 
 
 answer is, yes and no. Love, for example, im- 
 plies the relation of two persons, and these 
 persons and their relation constitutes a neces- 
 sary element of the conception. This element 
 music cannot express. There is no musical 
 formula, no succession or combination of tones 
 which can represent to our minds a man or a 
 woman, or the relation of the two. But the 
 emotional element of the case, the states or 
 movements of feeling involved, are expressible 
 in music. It is entirely possible to write music 
 which shall be universally acknowledged as ap- 
 propriate to a love-scene, as revealing an emo- 
 tional state which could exist under no other 
 conditions. Love, then, is not merely a feeling, 
 but the conception of it implies an intellectual 
 as well as an emotional element, and this ele- 
 ment must be supplied by words, or scenery, or 
 pantomime, or by all three, if the conception is 
 to come to complete and vivid realization. 
 Music expresses only the emotional element, 
 but it expresses it with a force, subtlety and 
 intensity such as no other means of emotional 
 expression can pretend to. These considera- 
 tions are the true ground on which the Wagne- 
 rian music-drama must rest for its justification. 
 It is the union of all the arts for the complete 
 embodiment of complex mental states and move- 
 ments, such as cannot be fully and perfectly 
 realized to- the imagination by means of any 
 one of them alone, or perhaps even by any two 
 in combination. 
 
 The symphony and the symphonic poem, 
 being instrumental music, can, of course, ex- 
 press feeling and only feeling. But, since all 
 our feelings, except occasionally the simplest 
 ones, are induced by ideas, by scenes, events,
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 155 
 
 the relations of persons, etc., it was natural 
 and perhaps inevitable, that the composer of 
 the symphonic poem, starting from the desire 
 to express definite feelings and laying out his 
 emotional plan on which the form of his work 
 was to depend, should imagine to himself some 
 story. A connected series of events, power- 
 fully affecting the feelings and progressing to a 
 climax, would afford the needed basis for such 
 a work, and would be likel}' to kindle his im- 
 agination more vividly than would mere musical 
 phrases unconnected in his mind with any 
 characters or defined occurrences. This is 
 what Liszt did. His symphonic poems bear 
 such titles as "Mazeppa," "Tasso," "Hamlet," 
 " Dante," "Prometheus," etc., and are attempts 
 to express the train of emotions appropriate to 
 the series of events in the stories, and to ex- 
 press them in their natural connections and 
 relations. 
 
 Whether he aimed to express them with such 
 definiteness as to make his music suggest 
 clearly each separate incident of the story be- 
 yond the possibility of mistake, may perhaps 
 be questioned. The best of all his " symphonic 
 poems" is probably " Les Preludes,'" 1 which 
 aims to express the emotions awakened by a 
 passage from Lamartine, the gist of which is 
 that life in all its vicissitudes is but a prelude 
 to eternity. This central thought gives scope 
 for lofty feeling, noble aspiration, solemn, sub- 
 lime emotion in the contemplation of Infinit}^, 
 and for the contrast of such feelings with the 
 ordinary experiences and passions of human 
 nature. Liszt's success in this work is proba- 
 bly due, not only to the more inspiring char- 
 acter of his theme, but also to the fact that 
 
 Llszfs 
 symphonic 
 poem "Jjfs 
 Preludes."
 
 156 
 
 INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC, PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 LESSON XVII. 
 
 ^Tendency to 
 overstep the 
 
 limits of 
 
 expression in 
 
 music. 
 
 Liszt's place in 
 musical 
 history. 
 
 there was no story. It is no part of the func- 
 tion of music to tell a story. "While it may 
 legitimately illustrate a story by intensifying 
 the expression qf the feelings connected with 
 it, there is a constant temptation, in a purety 
 instrumental composition, where a story is used 
 as basis, to make the music overstep its natural 
 limitations. There will be a constant tendency 
 to try, not only to express the feelings, but to 
 suggest the ideas. There have been marvel- 
 ously clever, ingenious and measurably suc- 
 cessful instances of this in the "programme 
 music " which makes up so large a portion of 
 the work of the romantic writers, and to which 
 Berlioz's symphonies and most "symphonic 
 poems " belong. But, at best, such efforts can 
 only be incompletely successful. Purely in- 
 strumental music is better confined to the ex- 
 pression of moods and movements of feelings 
 without seeking to embody other than musical 
 ideas. If a story is to be told, words or visible 
 scenes and pantomime can express fully and 
 clearly what music can, at best, only suggest 
 vaguely and indefinitely. 
 
 It is, perhaps, too earty to make a final esti- 
 mate of Liszt's rank as a composer." His place 
 in history, as regards his creative work, will 
 ultimately depend on his intellect, imagination, 
 originality, feelings and moral qualities. As 
 regards intellect, imagination and originality 
 he will rank high; though this latter quality 
 showed itself less in power of melodic invention 
 than in his innovations in harmony and in his 
 extensions of the traditional limits of tonality. 
 In these particulars he is hardly inferior to 
 Wagner himself. But when we come to the 
 content of his music, to the feelings he sought
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 157 
 
 to express and the moral qualities they reveal, 
 it is at least very doubtful whether he can be 
 accorded any but an interior rank. " Les Pre- 
 ludes " is probably his greatest work, and it 
 certainly deals with the noblest and most in- 
 spiring themes, but it nevertheless reaches no 
 such heights of elevated emotion as do the 
 noblest works of Bach, of Beethoven or of 
 Wagner. The moral implications of the best 
 works of these three men are such as raise 
 them high above the plane of feeling revealed 
 in the best of Liszt's compositions. But the 
 fascinating influence of his personality, the 
 dazzling brilliancy of his performances as a 
 piano-forte virtuoso, the force of his character, 
 the consciousness of power and the quiet audac- 
 ity with which he commanded worldly success, 
 as well as some amiable and generous qualities, 
 have so possessed the imaginations and blinded 
 the perceptions of two generations of young 
 musicians, that comparatively few of his con- 
 temporaries are capable of applying sober judg- 
 ment, either to his works or to his personal 
 character, of which his works are the outcome. 
 Later generations will probably judge his seri- 
 ous defects much less leniently. 
 
 Among the best writers - of " programme saint 
 music" is Gamille St. Saens (born 1835), a 
 Parisian organist, pianist, conductor and com- 
 poser of great ability. His symphonic poems, 
 " Phaeton," " Danse Macabre," " Le Rouet d' 
 Omphale"and "La jeunesse d' Hercule " are 
 extremely clever and successful attempts at 
 suggesting the story indicated by the title, by 
 means of characteristic musical treatment. But 
 he has not confined himself to this field of com- 
 position. He has also cultivated the classical
 
 158 
 
 INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC, PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 Other 
 
 composers of 
 instrumental 
 music in our 
 
 time. 
 
 forms, writing symphonies, concertos, organ 
 music and piano music, besides church music, 
 an oratorio and several operas. He ranks high 
 among living writers, and is the most origi- 
 nal among the younger generation of French 
 composers, as Berlioz is the most original in 
 the generation which preceded him. His work 
 is much more sane than that of his extremely 
 eccentric predecessor, whose work, although it 
 has latterly excited much interest as the work 
 of a powerful intellect and a brilliant, vivid, 
 heated imagination, is never likely to be 
 accepted as a model. In one respect only has 
 Berlioz's life-work been obviously productive of 
 results in the musical world. He enriched the 
 orchestra with new instruments and with new 
 combinations and contrasts, producing many 
 novelties in special effects. His work on in- 
 strumentation has been widely studied and very 
 influential. 
 
 In Germany, composers of sonatas, sympho- 
 nies and chamber music have been innumerable, 
 this kind of work being aimed at by every 
 ambitious student. The greatest names are 
 Joachim Raff ( 1822-1 882), who occupies middle 
 ground between the classical composers and 
 the extreme romanticists ; Johannes Brahmes 
 (born 1833), and Anton Rubinstein (born 1830), 
 whose work is of the most important in our 
 generation. Other noteworthy names in this 
 field are Carl Eeinecke (born 1824), Niels W. 
 Gade (born 181 T), Robert Volkmann (born 
 1815), W. Sterndale Bennett (1816-1875), an 
 English pupil of Mendelssohn; Max Bruch 
 (born 1838), Heinrich Hoffman (born 1842). 
 8. Jadassohn (born 1831), Anton Dvorak 
 (pron. Dvorshak, born 1841), a most origi-
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 159 
 
 nal and eccentric genius ; Edw. Grieg (born 
 1843), /. L. Nicode (born 1853), Moriiz 
 Moszkowski (born 1854), Philip Scharwenka 
 (born 1847), and his brother, Xaver (born 
 1850), Peter Tschaikowsky (born 1840), G. 
 Sgambati (born 1843), one of the best represent- 
 atives of the New Italy, F. H. Cowen (born 
 1852), and A. G. Mackenzie (born 1847, in Eng- 
 land), and John K. Paine (born 1839, in this 
 country). This list might be indefinitely ex- 
 tended. The mere mention of all the names of 
 composers of ability and promise would take 
 up too much space for our present limits. It is 
 peculiarly gratifying to an American to see how 
 many young composers are now coming forward 
 in this country, with thoroughly creditable 
 work. This remark would be still more forcible 
 if applied only to pianists and composers for 
 the piano-forte. America now contains a large 
 number of these of very high standing, and 
 their ranks are being constantly. recruited. 
 
 Because of the primary importance of the 
 violin as an orchestral instrument, this lesson 
 would hardly be complete without a brief sketch 
 of the progress of violin music since the time 
 of Corelli. In his day, Italy was the home of 
 violin music, as of all other music, and that 
 country long retained her supremacy in this 
 field. Omitting lesser names, the next great 
 Italian violinist was Giuseppe Tartini (1692- 
 1770). He was a highly educated man, and 
 contributed much not only to the development 
 of violin-playing, but to general musical intelli- 
 gence. He discovered the combination (re- 
 sultant) tones, and utilized them as a means of 
 securing pure intonation. He not only derived 
 the major chord (over-chord) from the first six 
 
 LISBON XVIt 
 
 Violin music. 
 
 Tartini.
 
 ir>o 
 
 INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC, PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 LE.SOJ. XVII. 
 
 Vfatti. 
 
 Pnaanint, 
 
 of the overtone series, as did Rameau,his great 
 contemporary, but he succeeded, where Rameau 
 had failed, in basing the minor chord (under- 
 chord) on the undertone series. But, as in the 
 time of Zarlino, who made the same discovery 
 before him, this idea bore no fruit, because the 
 mind of musical Europe was not yet prepared 
 to receive it. Whether the time is even yet 
 ripe for the inevitable revolution in harmonic 
 conceptions consequent on this idea, remains 
 to be seen. It doubtless lies at the foundation 
 of scientific harmony teaching in the future, 
 near or remote. 
 
 Tartini was a prolific composer, writing a 
 great deal of violin and chamber music. He 
 had a romantic experience in early life, conse- 
 quent on a secret marriage with a young lady 
 related to Cardinal Cornaro, the discovery of 
 which necessitated flight and a long conceal- 
 ment in a monastery. Most of his life was 
 passed as solo-violinist, orchestral conductor 
 and teacher in Padua, where he founded a high 
 school of violin playing. His compositions 
 rank high, and are even now played. 
 
 Another great Italian name in the field of 
 violin-playing is Giovanni Battista Viotti (1753- 
 1824), called, "the father of modern violin- 
 playing," and regarded as one of the most im- 
 portant composers for his instrument. He 
 wrote twenty-nine violin concertos, eighteen 
 violin sonatas, and a great deal of chamber 
 nmsic. A larger part of his life was spent in 
 Paris, 
 
 The greatest of ail Italian virtuosi on the 
 violin, and probably the greatest player yet 
 known, as regards technic, was Niccolo Pa- 
 ganini (1774-1840). He was a Genoese, came
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 161 
 
 of an uncultivated family, had little or no edu- 
 cation, and was by no means an admirable 
 character. But he possessed special talent for 
 music, early became a master of the violin, 
 combined all the excellences of other virtuosi 
 and surpassed them all, and astonished all 
 Europe with his enormous technical attain- 
 ments, and with the fire and passion of his 
 playing. He was not an interpreter of the great 
 classics for his instrument; he was original, 
 wilful, capricious, and, above all, effective, not 
 to say sensational. 
 
 In France and Belgium, a French-speaking 
 country, there have been many great violinists 
 in our time Artot, Baillot, de Beriot, Lafont, 
 Molique, Leonard, Vieuxtemps, Sauret, Rhode, 
 Ovide Musin, and others. In Germany and 
 elsewhere in Europe, the greatest names of our 
 century are Spohr, Ferdinand David, long a 
 distinguished teacher in the Leipzig Conserva- 
 tory, Kreutzer, Ernst, Wienawski, Auer, Dan- 
 da, Joseph Joachim, August Wilhelmi, Remenyi, 
 Saraste. Many other distinguished players 
 might be named, and there are now young vio- 
 linists coming forward who bid fair to" rival the 
 solo performances of the best of their predeces- 
 sors. 
 
 Modern
 
 162 
 
 INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC, PAST AND PRESENT 
 
 Lssox XVII. 
 
 QUESTIONS. 
 
 How did the modern symphony arise? 
 
 What is a "suite?" 
 
 Who were the greatest writers of suites? 
 
 Who was the first composer who employed the title 
 sonata?" 
 
 How many movements in D. Scarlatti's sonatas ? 
 
 How did these differ from the pieces of Bach and 
 laendel ? 
 
 Who was the greatest composer of fugues? 
 
 Who wrote the first harpischord sonatas in three move- 
 ments ? 
 
 What great composers modeled their sonatas on his ? 
 
 Describe Haydn's services in the development of instru- 
 mental music. 
 
 How did Mozart's symphonies differ from Haydn's ? 
 
 In whose works did the symphony form culminate ? 
 
 Who is acknowledged as the greatest of symphony com- 
 )osers and in what does his superiority consist ? 
 
 Give some account of Schubert's instrumental music. 
 Weber's. 
 
 Name some noted contemporaries and successors of 
 theirs. 
 
 Who were the great romantic composers? 
 
 Give some account of the works of Mendelssohn, Cho- 
 pin and Schumann. 
 
 Also of Berlioz and his works. 
 
 Name some of the principal works of each of these 
 composers. " 
 
 By what achievements will Liszt be known in history? 
 
 What is the characteristic difference between the Sym- 
 phony and Symphonic Poem ? 
 
 What is the relation of music, as a means of expression, 
 to such emotions as love, hate, etc. ? 
 
 What considerations justify Wagner's principles as a 
 composer of music drama? 
 
 How comes it that so many symphonic poems of Liszt 
 and others have names-implying a story or underlying plot ? 
 Can music tell a story ? 
 If not, why not ? 
 
 Given a story which excites a series of contrasted feel- 
 ings, can music suggest the story to any one who knows 
 beforehand what it is?
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 163 
 
 Would it be likely to suggest the story to any one who 
 did not know beforehand that the composer had the story 
 in mind when he wrote his music ? 
 
 Name Liszt's greatest orchestral work. 
 
 Why is it more successful than his other works? 
 
 How does it compare in nobility with the greatest works 
 of other great writers ? 
 
 By what qualities will Liszt's final place in history be 
 determined ? 
 
 In which of these qualities is his pre-eminence doubt- 
 ful? 
 
 By what qualities did he become popular? 
 
 Name the best of the younger French composers of 
 programme music and give some account of his work. 
 
 Give some of the greatest names in instrumental music 
 in Europe and in America. 
 
 Give some account of Tartini. 
 
 Of Viotti. 
 
 Of Paganini. 
 
 Name some of the other great violinists.
 
 LEMON XVIII. 
 
 Relation of 
 
 Ancient to 
 
 Modern Music. 
 
 Twelve 
 centuries of 
 hut slight 
 progren. 
 
 LESSON XVIII. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 WE have now dealt, in outline, with the whole 
 history of music as developed in the Christian 
 Era. Pre-christian music has received but slight 
 treatment, not because the subject is not in- 
 teresting, but because it is greatly inferior in 
 interest and importance to our own music. 
 Ancient music, even in Greece, never passed a 
 certain rudimentary stage, and it is to our own 
 time that we must look for all the higher de- 
 velopments of the art. Nevertheless, tbe Greek 
 theory and practice, although the latter was 
 imperfectly understood and the former grossly 
 misapprehended, exercised on Christian music 
 an influence so important that it seemed neces- 
 sary to give a brief account of the Greek theory, 
 at least, and to point out its relations to our 
 own, as was done in Lesson I. But the limits 
 of the space allowed forbade a complete state- 
 ment of all the later refinements of Greek 
 theory, such as the enharmonic and chromatic 
 modes, etc. 
 
 The history of modern music begins with the 
 first attempts of Christian prelates to improve 
 church music. The first events of note are few 
 and far between. The setting up of singing 
 schools and choirs in the early part of the fourth 
 century, the establishment of the four f authen- 
 tic " scales by St. Ambrose about the end of the 
 same century, the addition of the four " plagal " 
 scales by Gregory the Great, two hundred years 
 later, the spread of the Gregorian chant under 
 the Empire of Charlemagne, the first crude 
 164
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTOEY. 
 
 attempts at harmony by Hucbald, three hundred 
 years after Gregory, the beginnings of our staff 
 notation by Guido of Arezzo a hundred j*ears 
 after Hucbald, the first use of notes to measure 
 ^he length of tones by Franco, of Cologne, two 
 hundred years later still, these are all the events 
 of note in the development of scientific music 
 for the first twelve centuries of Christianity. 
 It was a thousand years after the early Christians 
 began singing hymns in their worship before 
 there was any adequate means of representing 
 relative pitch, and twelve hundred years before 
 there was any adequate notation for represent- 
 ing the length of tones. Thus slowly did the 
 fundamentals of musical science develop them- 
 selves. 
 
 After the thirteenth century progress went 
 on with constantly accelerating rapidity. The 
 beginning of the fourteenth century ushered in 
 the great and decisive epoch of the Netherland- 
 ers, and at the very culmination of their work 
 came the invention of opera, as an attempt to 
 revive the Greek drama, and the oratorio, grow- 
 ing out of the miracle plaj^s. Out of these has 
 come a stead}' growth up to the latest culmina- 
 tion of the opera in the music-drama of Wagner. 
 These forms of art necessitated the perfection 
 of vocal music, both solo and choral, and the 
 independent development of the organ and 
 harpsichord and of the several orchestral instru- 
 ments. Out of the latter came solo playing and 
 the special development of instrumental music, 
 culminating in the fugue, as the acme of the 
 contrapuntal style and in the sonata, symphony 
 and finally, of the symphonic poem as the acme 
 of free style. 
 
 165 
 
 LKSSOS XVIII 
 
 Accelerated 
 progress from 
 
 the 
 
 13th century 
 onward.
 
 166 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 tfonew path 
 yet clearly 
 marked out. 
 
 Thus far we have come ; and the question 
 naturally arises : What next ? Is there to be 
 an advance on Wagner in the field of the music- 
 drama ? If so, in what direction ? Will any 
 composer in the field of the oratoria surpass 
 Haendel's Messiah or Bach's Passion Music 
 according to St. Matthew? Will orchestral music 
 go beyond the Beethoven symphonies or the 
 symphonic poems of the later romanticists? 
 
 If there is now existing any new principle to 
 be developed in any field of musical art, it is 
 not plainly to be seen, and, so far as known to 
 the present writer, no one has announced the 
 discovery of any new path into which the com- 
 posers of the next few decades are to lead us. 
 Instrumental composers content themselves 
 with reproducing the classic forms of Mozart 
 and Beethoven, infusing into them more or less 
 of the spirit of the romantic school, or they 
 return to still earlier, even archaic forms, such 
 as the suite and its components. Comparatively 
 few seek to follow in the steps of Liszt and of 
 Berlioz. Yet precisely in the field of the sym- 
 phonic poem is there room for the originality of 
 genius to assert itself. That form is new and it 
 is also legitimate, based on true natural princi- 
 ples. Liszt originated it, but he did not exhaust 
 it. With the symphony it is different. Beet- 
 hoven's genius was so colossal that it is hardly 
 conceivable that his greatest symphonies can 
 ever be surpassed. Whereas Liszt's genius was 
 by no means commensurate with the form he 
 invented. It is quite within the possibilities 
 that men now living may listen to symphonic 
 poems by some composer as yet unheard of, the 
 content of which shall be vastly more sublime 
 than that of any such works now existing. 
 
 Tfiefleldof 
 the symphonic 
 pofmopen to 
 uriglnal work.
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 167 
 
 As regards oratorio, no one seems to dream 
 of any advance in principle on those of Haendel. 
 Mendelssohn's "Elijah " is more dramatic, but 
 that is merely because it deals with a subject 
 capable of dramatic treatment. And no ora- 
 torio since " Elijah " has equalled that work. 
 
 The music-drama of Wagner represents the 
 culmination both of dramatic ideals and dra- 
 matic effects in the realm of opera, so far as yet 
 appears and so far as can now be foreseen. And 
 as regards solo performances, both technical 
 skill and interpretative power seem to have 
 reached the limit of human capability. 
 
 Nevertheless it would be rash to conclude 
 that the art of music has fully exhausted its 
 possibilities and is now to enter on a period of 
 stagnation and decadence, as other arts have 
 done. It would be presumptuous now, certain- 
 ly, to affirm that the next generation may not 
 have as great surprises in store for it as the 
 great romanticists have given us. When they 
 have come, if they do come, they will furnish 
 matter for the critic and the historian. At 
 present they are beyond prophecy and even 
 beyond conjecture. 
 
 LSSHON XVIII 
 
 jyresent 
 unwise.
 
 168 CONCLUSION. 
 
 LWXTIII. QUESTIONS. 
 
 Why was it best to deal but briefly with Ancient Music? 
 
 Why deal with it at all? 
 
 Describe the slow progress of early Christian music. 
 
 Give a brief summary of musical progress after 1300. 
 
 Do we know of any new principle in musical art likely 
 to be developed in the near future ? 
 
 Why is there now more room for the exercise of original 
 creative power in the field of the symphonic poem than 
 hi that of the symphony ? 
 
 Is there any apparent prospect that the Wagnerian 
 music-drama will be surpassed ?
 
 LESSON XIX. 
 
 PROGRESS FBOM 1887 TO 1894. 
 
 During the seven years which have (nearly) 
 elapsed since this book was written, there has been 
 a great deal of musical activity, both as regards 
 composition and performance. New composers, 
 players, and singers have come before the musical 
 public of Europe and of this country, and many of 
 them have won unqualified success. But none of 
 them can be called epoch-making, in the sense 
 that they have struck out new paths which future 
 musical production or interpretation will follow. 
 All the composers now living, even the greatest, 
 are producing works on lines already laid down 
 before their activity began. Such originality as 
 appears in these works is shown in the strongly 
 individual way in which these men have appropri- 
 ated the materials at hand and have re-arranged 
 them in accordance with their own individual 
 characters, not in the discovery of any new prin- 
 ciples or methods. This is not to deny origi- 
 nality to all the works of the greatest composers of 
 these latter years ; one has only to mention such 
 names as Tschaikowsky and Dvorak to be re- 
 minded of works which have character of a strongly 
 marked type. These men had something to say 
 of their own, and they have said it in their own 
 individual and characteristic way; but none of 
 them has broken any new p#th, such as Chopin did 
 in the domain of piano music, and Liszt when he 
 invented the symphonic poem; not to speak of 
 the epoch-making work of Wagner in the domain 
 of musical drama. 
 
 169 
 
 No new paths 
 struck out
 
 170 
 
 PR G RESS 1887-1894. 
 
 Optra 
 in Oermuny. 
 
 " Bringing this book up to date," then, must 
 mean nothing more than chronicling the most im- 
 portant of the new men and new works which have 
 appeared on the scene since 1887. To record all 
 the phenomena would obviously be impossible; 
 several such volumes as this would be required to 
 make even a brief notice of all the young compo- 
 sers, players, and singers of the last seven years, 
 and to give a critical estimate of what they have 
 accomplished. The most I can hope to do is to 
 attempt a record of the most important and char- 
 acteristic phenomena; and even such an attempt 
 is certain to be more or less unsuccessful. Only a 
 small percentage of the compositions and perform- 
 ances of this time have come under my own obser- 
 vation, and the reports of them which I have seen 
 may possibly not always have been trustworthy. 
 In musical criticism, as elsewhere, the " personal 
 equation " has always to be allowed for; ami in 
 forming an opinion at second hand, it is impossible 
 to make the right allowance, unless one knows the 
 critic upon whose estimate it is necessary to rely. 
 What is here said, therefore, is offered, I hope, 
 with becoming modesty. It is more than probable 
 that men or works will be omitted who deserve 
 mention quite as much as many of those finding 
 place in the present record. I trust, however, 
 that readers who see reason to find fault on this 
 score, or who may differ from any of my conclu- 
 sions, will at least give me credit for good inten- 
 tions, and will attribute any defects and errors 
 which may be found to the inevitable limitations 
 of the situation. 
 
 Let us begin with the field of opera. Produc- 
 tion and performance have been incessant. In 
 Germany new operas have appeared every year 
 as candidates for popular favor, which some of
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 171 
 
 them have succeeded in obtaining ; but if any of 
 them are of anything like epoch-making impor- 
 tance, that fact is not yet sufficiently evident. Few 
 of them have made their appearance on this side 
 of the Atlantic. Vienna has shown its usual in- 
 terest and activity in the field of operetta, but, so 
 far as I am aware, nothing has been produced there 
 to surpass the works in that genre already in ex- 
 istence. Indeed, the new ones which I have thus 
 far heard show more power of imitation and of 
 utilizing reminiscence than originality ; and, for 
 that matter, nothing in this field with which I am 
 acquainted displays the real genius of Offenbach, 
 the originator of the genre. 
 
 In Italy, on the other hand, the tendencies 
 shown by Verdi in his Aida and Otello and by 
 Boito in his Mefistofele seem to have become 
 dominant. Verdi himself, although an octoge- 
 narian, has produced a comic opera, Falstaff, 
 which has excited the greatest enthusiasm not only 
 in Italy, but all over Europe; and he is reported 
 to be at work on still another important opera on 
 the subject of " Romeo and Juliet. " There are 
 numerous young men in that country engaged in 
 the production of opera, two of whom have become 
 celebrated all over the civilized world. These are 
 Pietro Mascagni and Ruggiero Leoncavallo. 
 The Cavalleria Rusticana of the former, a one- 
 act opera, or rather music-drama, has made its 
 way with unexampled rapidity and is successfully 
 given everywhere. It is a radical departure from 
 the old-time methods and principles of Italian 
 opera, being first of all intensely dramatic. The 
 action is swift, exciting, absorbing; so much so, 
 indeed, that it became necessary to interrupt the 
 action by an orchestral intermezzo, to give relief 
 to the hearers. This piece is extremely popular 
 
 In Vienna. 
 
 In Italy. 
 
 Mascagni and 
 Leoncavallo.
 
 172 
 
 PR GR ESS 1887-1894. 
 
 New operas 
 in Germany. 
 
 on the concert stage. Mascagni has written other 
 operas : L'Amico Fritz, I Rantzau, William Rat- 
 cliff, and Sigaretta; but none of them, I believe, 
 have yet made their way across the Atlantic, nor 
 have any of them become as popular in Europe 
 as the one which first made Mascagni's reputation. 
 Leoncavallo's reputation was made by a similar 
 opera, / Pagliacci (The Mountebanks), His other 
 works thus far consist of three operas, / Medici, 
 Gerolamo Savonarola, and Cesare Borgia, meant 
 to succeed each other in the order given as a tri- 
 logy. Of these only the first has been performed, 
 so far as I know ; indeed, I am not sure that the 
 remaining two are yet finished. Both these men 
 are very young in the early twenties, I believe. 
 Their work characterizes the new departure in 
 Italian dramatic music. It is very strongly influ- 
 enced by the practice of Wagner and is as far as 
 possible from the ideals and practice of Rossini, 
 Bellini, and Donizetti. How far this tendency is 
 followed by other young Italian composers I have 
 at present no means of knowing. It will require 
 some time yet before we can estimate the value of 
 the operatic productions of to-day in Italy, France, 
 and Germany. Some late operas in the latter 
 country proceed from composers of high reputa- 
 tion in other fields: for example, Moszkowski's 
 Boabdil, X. Scharwenka's Mata-swintha, and Eugen 
 d' Albert's Der Rubin (The Ruby}. But so far 
 as yet appears they are not on new lines. The 
 French composers seem to be slowly coming under 
 the Wagneriao influence, which they escaped for 
 long; but the fruits of it are not yet ripe. There 
 is no production in this field in either England or 
 America which appears to possess historic impor- 
 tance, although there is considerable activity in 
 both countries.
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 173 
 
 In the field of the oratorio and the cantata 
 there is no new departure, although many have 
 been produced. English composers have been, as 
 usual, active in this field. Among recent works 
 may be mentioned A. C. Mackenzie's Bethlehem, 
 F. H. Cowen's Water Lily, A. R. Gaul's Una, 
 Hami?h MacCunn's Lay of the Last Minstrel, and 
 J. F. Barnett's The Wishing Bell. Rubinstein hks 
 lately finished an oratorio entitled Christus, which 
 he is said to look on as the crowning work of his 
 career. 
 
 In instrumental music the two foremost names 
 within the past few years have been those of Peter 
 Tschaikowsky and Antonin Dvorak, both of whom 
 have been exceedingly active in the production of 
 works in both the smaller and the larger forms. 
 The world of music suffered a great loss in the 
 death of Tschaikowsky, which occurred very sud- 
 denly, from cholera, November 6, 1893. Dvorak 
 has within a year become an American, and is now 
 in New York as Director of the Conservatory 
 founded by the public spirit of Mrs. Jeanette 
 Thurber. He has written a new symphony within 
 the past year. Anton Bruckner, Professor in the 
 Vienna Conservatory, is a name spoken of with 
 great respect, especially on account of his seven 
 symphonies, but he is practically unknown in this 
 country. Among the younger men the names of 
 Ludwig Schytt6, a Danish composer, and E. A. 
 Macdowell, an American, take high rank for orig- 
 inality of ideas and superior workmanship. Edu- 
 ard Schuett, "born in 1856 in St. Petersburg, but 
 now a conductor and composer in Vienna, ranks 
 also very high. Schytte is a somewhat older man, 
 born in 1848, while Macdowell is younger, born in 
 1 860. The latter is a man of whom all American 
 musicians and connoisseurs are proud ; for he is 
 
 Oratorio in 
 England. 
 
 Instrumented 
 music. 
 
 Tschaikowsky . 
 Dvorak. 
 
 Schyttt. 
 Macdowell.
 
 174 
 
 PR ORE SS 1887-1894. 
 
 Pi.initts of the 
 pruent. 
 
 Teresa Crirrello. 
 
 Finny Blown- 
 field- Zeisler. 
 
 probably not outranked by any European com- 
 poser of the time, certainly not by any of his age. 
 In England, Hamish MacCunn occupies a some- 
 what similar position. There is much meritorious 
 and musician-like work among the younger com- 
 posers on both sides of the Atlantic, vastly more 
 than can be mentioned in my present space. 
 
 Of performing artists many new ones have come 
 forward during the past few years. Among pian- 
 ists, the names of Sauer, Siloti, and Reisenauer 
 appear frequently in European records. Arthur 
 Friedheim, Moritz Rosenthal, Eugen d'Albert, 
 Alfred Gruenfeld, Vladimir de Pachmann, and, 
 above all, Ignaz Jan Paderewski have become 
 known in this country. The latter has excited an 
 interest and enthusiasm comparable only to that 
 formerly excited by Liszt. I was present at a mat- 
 inee recital of his in Chicago when the great Au- 
 ditorium was filled with more than five thousand - 
 people. This crowd sat or stood more than two 
 and a half hours to hear him play, and then in- 
 sisted on a final recall. This Pole is a many-sided 
 artist, who inspires by the sheer force of inborn 
 genius, a quality which also appears in his com- 
 positions. De Pachmann is a most delicate and 
 unique exponent of the feminine side of Chopin, 
 which he seems to make his specialty. 
 
 Two American lady pianists, Mme. Teresa 
 Carreno d'Albert and Mme. Fanny Bloomfield- 
 Zeisler, nave won great favor and renown in Europe 
 within the past year or two. Both are artists of 
 very high rank. But no pianist has surpassed 
 the standard set by Liszt a half-century ago. 
 Piano-playing, the piano being what it is, seems 
 to have reached its extreme limits, the difference 
 between concert pianists, nowadays, being merely 
 differences of individual character. Whether the
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 175 
 
 piano is to be improved, or even transformed into 
 a different instrument, as the harpsichord was 
 transformed into it, does not yet appear. The Janko 
 keyboard seems to be making its way, only very 
 slowly. The " Harmonic Attachment" exhibited 
 by Mr. Hlavatch, the Russian commissioner to 
 the World's Columbian Exposition, would seem to 
 involve great possibilities, but it is still known to 
 but few. I hear also of the application of elec- 
 tricity to the instrument by Lipp & Son, of 
 Stuttgart ; but this, too, is still undeveloped. Per- 
 haps the next decade or two may witness great 
 achievements in this field. 
 
 Among violinists, the young ladies appear to 
 be coming to the front very rapidly. The names 
 of Teresina Tua, Maud Powell, Geraldine Morgan, 
 and " Arma Senkrah" occur to me as appearing 
 very frequently in European musical news. All 
 but the first of these are Americans. Miss L. 
 Florence Heine, of New York, is another Ameri- 
 can girl who has won an assured place as a violin- 
 ist, and I have lately heard still another, Miss 
 Leonora von Stosch, who is already a mature 
 and exceedingly satisfactory artist. The young 
 French violinist, Henri Marteau, although not 
 yet twenty years old, seems to be exciting nearly 
 as much enthusiasm as Paderewski does in the 
 field of piano-playing. But the violin and violin 
 technic are just what they have been ; and the 
 young artists are simply continuing the traditions 
 of their elders. 
 
 Among singers, there is the continually vexed 
 question of dramatic effectiveness versus vocal tech- 
 nic, in which both sides are right and both wrong. 
 In musical drama, whenever it is worthy of the 
 name, the first business of a singer is to produce 
 dramatic effects. But to this end an approx- 
 
 Improvemenls 
 
 in the pianr* 
 
 forte. 
 
 Lady violinists. 
 
 Marteuu. 
 
 Dramatic 
 
 Singers vs. Fir. 
 
 tuosi.
 
 176 
 
 PR GRESS 1887-1894. 
 
 Theory 
 and literature. 
 
 iraately correct use of the voice, to say the least, it 
 necessary. But human nature is weak enough, so 
 that when the opportunity for vocal display is 
 denied, raany singers will neglect vocal technic 
 and seek to attain dramatic effect without going 
 through the drudgery necessary to attain virtuos- 
 ity. Thus, one reads every week in the New 
 York papers that Mme. Melba is a vocal vir- 
 tuoso of the first rank, but lacks passion and 
 dramatic power; and that Mrae. Calve is a great 
 dramatic singer, while nothing is said of her vocal 
 virtuosity. Doubtless we shall have these two 
 classes of singers always. Those who have fine 
 voices but lack dramatic ability will cultivate 
 vocal technic and display it in concerts and in the 
 older Italian operas. Those who have dramatic 
 power will exercise that mainly. Some of them, 
 like Alvary, Fischer, Reichmann, the de Reszke 
 brothers, Lilli Lehmann, and our own Emma 
 Eames (to mention only a few of those now on 
 the stage) will be conscientious and ambitious 
 enough to make the most of their vocal resources 
 by the most severe study, while they subordinate 
 them to the requirements of emotional expression, 
 and will thus become not only great virtuosi, 
 but great artists. 
 
 In the fields of theory and of literature about 
 music and musicians there has been a good deal 
 done. The theories of Riemann and Von Oettin- 
 gen seem not to have made their way as yet, 
 physicists looking on the acoustic basis of their 
 theories as not having passed beyond the stage of 
 speculation, while musicians regard them as too 
 much of an innovation. There will need to be 
 much further research before they can be con- 
 sidered as established, if they ever are. Mr. 
 Julius Klauser has published a very ingenious and
 
 LESSONS jy MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 177 
 
 decidedly revolutionary theory, which he entitles 
 " The Septonate." It remains to be seen how 
 widely it will be accepted. There is much activity 
 in the field of primitive music with a view to dis- 
 covering the fundamental laws which govern the 
 spontaneous production of folk-music. A book on 
 primitive music has lately been published in Lon- 
 don by R. Wallascheck, and numerous essays in 
 magazines and separate brochures have appeared 
 both in Europe and in this country. An American 
 lady, Miss Alice C. Fletcher, a Fellow of Harvard 
 University, has made an extremely important 
 contribution to this subject in her " Study of 
 Omaha Indian Music," lately published by the 
 Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and 
 Ethnology of Harvard University. In this work 
 she had the valuable assistance of Mr. Francis 
 La Flesche, an Omaha Indian. 
 
 Such portion of the work as required the train- 
 ing of a professional musician was entrusted to 
 myself. It is not too much to say that the re- 
 . searches in this work establish the important fact 
 that folk melody always runs on harmonic lines, 
 a conclusion confirmed by further investigations 
 of mine, especially during the past year. Those 
 who are interested in these investigations will find 
 the records of them in various issues of the 
 magazine, Music, in the Journal of American Folk 
 Lore, and in the Proceedings of the Anthropological 
 Congress, held at the World's Columbian Exposi- 
 tion. 
 
 Biographical literature has centered about the 
 personality of Wagner. To say nothing about the 
 German works concerning him, in France there 
 has been a biography by Jullieu ; in England, 
 Ferdinand Praeger's " Wagner as I Knew Him " 
 has excited much interest ; and in America we 
 12 
 
 Studies in 
 primitive mutic.
 
 178 
 
 PR GRESS 1887-1894. 
 
 have Krehbiel's " Studies in the Wagnerian 
 Drama " and Finck's " Wagner aud His Works." 
 But it would be impossible to recall and name all 
 the interesting works in this field which have 
 recently come to light. Suffice it to say that 
 interest in music and in the great names in music 
 is rapidly on the increase, and that musical culture 
 and knowledge in our own country, which most 
 especially interests us, are rapidly growing. What 
 may eventually come of it nobody can now pre- 
 dict, but we have a right to be very hopeful. 
 
 The list of notable names in the necrology of 
 musicians since 1887 is, fortunately, not very 
 large; but it includes some of the most prominent. 
 Stephen Heller died in 1888, Niels W. Gade in 
 1890, Robert Franz in 1892, Charles Gounod and 
 Peter Tschaikowsky in 1893, and Hans Guido von 
 Buelow in 1894. In. America, we lost Dr. Louis 
 Maas and Dr. Karl Merz in 1889, George W. 
 Morgan in 1892, and John Sullivan Dwight, 
 formerly editor of Dwight's Journal of Music, to 
 whom American musical culture owes an enor- 
 mous debt, and whom many of us revered with- 
 out knowing him personally, in 1893. 
 
 JOHN COMFORT FILLMOBE. 
 
 MILWAUKEE, Wis., 
 MARCH 3, 1894.
 
 LESSONS IN MUSICAL HISTORY. 
 
 179 
 
 QUESTIONS. 
 
 Has any one done epoch-making work in composition 
 within the past seven years? 
 
 In what does originality, nowadays, consist? 
 
 In what country is there at present a new departure in 
 the field of opera, as compared with former styles of 
 o)>eratic composition in the same country ? 
 
 What are the two names which mark the new epoch ? 
 Give the names of their principal operas. 
 
 Name three new operas in Germany, and their com- 
 posers. 
 
 Name some new oratorios and cantatas and their 
 composers. 
 
 What are some of the most prominent names at present 
 in the field of instrumental composition? 
 
 Name several of the greatest pianists and violinists of 
 the present. 
 
 What are the prospects of improving the pianoforte ? 
 
 Name some recent works in the fields of theory and 
 musical literature.
 
 180 
 
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 A CONCISE CHRONOLOGICAL HISTORY OF THE CHIEF 
 
 MUSICIANS AND MUSICAL EVENTS 
 
 FROM A. D. 1380-1885. 
 
 BY C. E. LOWE. 
 DATE 
 
 1380 I Guillaume Dufay, b.*Hennegau. One of the ear- 
 liest writers of Canons. 
 
 1400?! John Dunstable, b. Bedfordshire. Called the 
 I " Father of English Contrapuntists." 
 Rise of the "Early Belgian School." 
 
 1430 
 
 1440 
 
 1458 
 1480 
 1490 
 
 1502 
 1513 
 
 1514 
 1520? 
 
 1521 
 1523 
 
 Johannes Ockenheim, b. East Flanders. One of 
 
 the earliest writers of Fugues. 
 Guillaume Dufay, d.f Rome. 
 Jusquin des Pres, b. Picardy. Wrote Masses in 
 
 five parts, and splendid Canons. 
 Rise of the " Early English School." 
 John Dunstable, d. London. 
 Development of the "Fugal style" of music. 
 Martin Luther, b. Eisleben. Introduced the 
 
 Chorale into the German Churches. 
 Adrian Willaert, b. Bruges. Said to have intro- 
 duced the Madrigal. 
 
 Organ pedals said to have been introduced. 
 Music types first invented. 
 Johannes Ockenheim, d. Tours. 
 The Clavichord in use in England. 
 Giov. Pierluigi Palestrina, b. Palestrina. The 
 
 greatest composer of the 16th century. 
 Andrea Amati, b. Cremona. Founder of the 
 
 "Cremona School" of Violins. 
 Orlando di Lasso, b. Hennegau. The last of the 
 
 Composers of the "Early Belgian School." 
 Jusquin des Pr6s, d. France. 
 John Merbecke, b. London? Set the English 
 
 Liturgy to a plain song, which is still used. 
 
 * b, born. 3 t d, died.
 
 DATE 
 
 1523 Virginals and Spinets in vogue about this time. 
 1529 
 
 1539 
 
 1546 
 1550 
 
 1660 
 
 1563 
 
 1568 
 1577 
 1580 
 
 1581 
 1683 
 
 1585 
 
 1594 
 1595 
 
 1596 
 1597 
 
 Thomas Tallis, b. London? The greatest Con 
 
 trapuntist of the age. 
 
 Chorales introduced into the German Churches. 
 William Byrde, b. London? A celebrated 
 
 Composer, and pupil of Tallis. 
 Bassoon invented about this time. 
 Martin Luther, d. Eisleben. 
 Jacopo Peri. b. Florence. The composer of the 
 
 first Operas. 
 Regals introduced. 
 Rise of the "Early Italian School." 
 Madrigals introduced. 
 John Wilbye, b. England. Celebrated English 
 
 Composer of Madrigals. 
 Anthems first sung at the' Chapel Royal. 
 Rise of the ''Oratorio." 
 Dr. John Bull, b. Somersetshire. First Professor 
 
 of Music at Gresham College. 
 Adrian Willaert, d. Belgium. 
 Claudio Monteverde, b. Cremona. Made a great 
 
 advance in Operatic Music. 
 >Andrea Amati, d. Cremona. 
 Violin first introduced into England. 
 Gregorio Allegri, b. Rome. A celebrated Church 
 
 Composer. 
 
 Rise of the ' 'Opera." 
 
 The " Gresham Lectures on Music " founded. 
 Orlando Gibbons, b. Cambridge. Wrote Church 
 
 music which is still in use. 
 Heinrich Schiitz, b. Kosteritz. Wrote Oratorios, 
 
 and the first German Opera. 
 John Merbecke and T. Tallis, d. London. 
 Giov. Pierluigi Palestrina, d. Rome. 
 Orlando di Lasso, d. Munich. 
 Decline of the "Early Belgian School." 
 Nicholas Amati, b. Cremona. Renowned for his 
 
 splendid Violins. 
 Performance of the first Opera, " Dafne," by 
 
 Peri.
 
 DATE. 
 
 1600?: Giacomo Carissimi, b. Italy. Wrote Oratorios, 
 
 and invented the "Arioso." 
 Peri's second Opera, " Eurydice," performed. 
 First Oratorio in Italy. 
 
 1609? 
 
 1612 
 1620? 
 
 1623 
 1625 
 1626 
 1627 
 
 1628? 
 
 1633 
 
 1637 
 1643 
 1644 
 
 1645 
 1648 
 
 1652 
 1653 
 
 1655 
 1658 
 
 1659 
 
 Thomas Brewer, b. London? Called the "Father 
 
 of the English Glee." 
 Harpsichords introduced into England about 
 
 this time. 
 
 John Wilbye, d. England. 
 Jacob Stainer, b. Innsbruck. Celebrated for his 
 
 Violin making. 
 Jacobo Peri, d. Florence. 
 William Byrde, d. London. 
 Orlando Gibbons, d. Canterbury. 
 Professorship of Music founded at Oxford. 
 First German Opera, "Daphne," by Schlitz, at 
 
 Dresden. 
 Matthew Lock, b. Exeter. The Composer of 
 
 the first English Opera. 
 Dr. John Bull, d. Hamburg? 
 Jean Battiste Lully, b. Florence. The chief foun- 
 der of the French Opera. 
 The first Opera House built (Venice). 
 Claudio Monteverde, d. Venice. 
 Antonius Stradiuarius, b. Cremona. The greatest 
 
 Violin maker who has ever lived. 
 Rise of the French opera. 
 Alessandro Stradella, Naples. Composer of some 
 
 fine Oratorios. 
 Dr. John Blow, b. Nottinghamshire. Composer 
 
 of some excellent Anthems. 
 Gregorio Allegri, d. Rome. 
 Arcangelo Corelli, b. Bologna. Called the 
 
 " Father of modern Violin playing." 
 First Festival in aid of the " Sons of the Clergy 
 
 Corporation." 
 Henry Purcell, b. London. One of the greatest 
 
 musical Composers of England. 
 Alessandro Scarlatti, b. Italy. Wrote Masses, 
 
 Oratorios, Operas, etc. 
 The first French Opera produced.
 
 DATE. 
 
 1668 Francois Couperin, b. Paris. Wrote some good 
 Suites for the Piano, etc. 
 
 1672 
 
 1673 
 
 1674 
 1676 
 1677 
 
 1681 
 1683 
 
 1684 
 
 1685 
 
 1687 
 1689 
 
 1692 
 1694 
 
 Heinrich Schiitz, d. Dresden. 
 
 Music Copper-plates first used in England about 
 this time. 
 
 First Concerts in London with audience admitted 
 by payment. 
 
 First English Opera, "Psyche," by Matthew 
 Lock. 
 
 ?Giacomo Carissimi, d. Rome. 
 
 ? Thomas Brewer, d. London? 
 
 Dr. William Croft, b. Warwickshire. .An excel- 
 lent writer of Church Music. 
 
 Matthew Lock, d. London. 
 
 Alessandro Siradella, d. Genoa. 
 
 Jean Philippe Rameau, b. Dijon. Composed the 
 opera "Castor and Pollux," and other works. 
 
 ? Jacob Stainer, d. Italy. 
 
 Purcell's Twelve Sonatas for the Violin pub- 
 lished. 
 
 Giuseppe Guarnerius, b. Cremona. A very cel- 
 ebrated Violin maker. 
 
 Domenico Scarlatti, b. Naples. Wrote excellent 
 music for the Organ and Pianoforte. 
 
 Francesco Durante, b. Naples. Wrote good 
 Church Music. 
 
 Nicholas Amati, d. Cremona. 
 
 Professorship of Music founded at Cambridge. 
 
 Johann Sebastian Bach, b. Eisenach. Wrote the 
 "Passion Music," and many world-famed 
 works. 
 
 George Friedrich Handel, b. Halle. Composer 
 of the " Messiah," " Israel in Egypt," " Saul," 
 etc. 
 
 Jean Battiste Lully, d. Paris. 
 
 Nicolo Porpora, b. Rome. Violinist and Com- 
 poser for the Violin. 
 
 Giuseppe Tartini, b. Pirano. Celebrated Violin- 
 ist and Composer. 
 
 Purcell wrote his celebrated " Te Deum." 
 a
 
 DATE. 
 
 1695 
 1699 
 
 1700 
 1705 
 1706 
 
 1710 
 
 1711 
 
 1712 
 1713 
 
 1714 
 
 1717 
 1719 
 
 1720 
 
 1723 
 
 1724 
 1725 
 
 1726 
 
 Henry PurceH, d. London. 
 
 Johann Adolph Hasse, b. Hamburg. Wrote 
 Operas, Oratorios, and other works. 
 
 Italian Opera introduced into England. 
 
 Handel wrote his first Opera, " Almira." 
 
 Giambattista Martini, b. Bologna. Wrote Masses, 
 Operas, and other works. 
 
 Giov. Battista Pergolesi, b. Ancona. Wrote a 
 splendid " Stabat Mater ;" died very young. 
 
 Dr. T. Augustine Arne, b. London. Wrote Op- 
 eras and " Rule Britannia." 
 
 Dr. William Boyce, b. London. Composed good 
 Church Music. 
 
 Handel first came to England. 
 
 Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, b. Hamburg. Good 
 Composer; introduced a new style of fingering 
 for the Pianoforte. 
 
 Invention of the Hammer-Clavier (Pianoforte). 
 
 Swell Organ introduced. 
 
 Arcangelo Corelli, d. Rome. 
 
 Handel's " Te Deum " for the peace of Utrecht. 
 
 Christoph Willibaldv. Gluck, b. Bohemia. Wrote 
 splendid Operas, " Orfeo," "Alceste," "Ar- 
 mide," etc. 
 
 A good model Pianoforte made by C. G. Schroter. 
 
 The firm of Breitkopf and H'artel, Leipzig, 
 founded. 
 
 Sir John Hawkins, b. London. Wrote a cele- 
 brated ''History of Music." 
 
 Handel's " Esther;" first Oratorio in England. 
 
 Fran9ois Couperin, d. Paris. 
 
 Bach appointed Organist of " St. Thomas," Leip- 
 zig. 
 
 " The Three Choirs Festival" first instituted. 
 
 Alessandro Scarlatti, d. Naples. 
 
 First Vol. of Bach's " Preludes and Fugues" ap- 
 peared. 
 
 Johann G. Albrechtsberger, b. Vienna. Wrote a 
 great work on " Harmony and Composition." 
 
 Clarionets invented about this time. 
 7
 
 DATE. 
 
 1727 
 
 1728 
 
 1729 
 1730 
 
 1732 
 
 1737 
 
 1738 
 1739 
 
 1740 
 
 1741 
 1743 
 
 1745 
 
 1747 
 
 1752 
 
 Gaetan Pugnani, b. Turin. Violinist and Com- 
 poser. 
 
 Dr. William Croft, d. London. 
 
 Johann Adam Hiller, b. Prussia. Composed Op- 
 erettas, etc. 
 
 NiccoloPiccinni, b Naples. Wrote good Operas ; 
 a great rival of Gluck's. 
 
 First performance of Bach's " Passion Music." 
 
 Luigi Boccherini, b. Lucca. One of the earliest 
 writers of Symphonies. 
 
 Joseph Haydn, b. Austria. World-renowned 
 Composer of all kinds of music. 
 
 Pedals invented to Harps about this time. 
 
 Antonius Stradiuarius, d. Cremona. 
 
 First performance of Rameau's " Castor and Pol- 
 lux." 
 
 Giov. Battista Pergolesi, d. Naples. 
 
 " Royal Society of Musicians," London, founded. 
 
 Dr. Samuel Arnold, b. London. Wrote Operas, 
 Oratorios, and Church Compositions. 
 
 Handel wrote the Oratorios "Saul" and "Israel 
 in Egypt." 
 
 Second Vol. of Bach's " Preludes and Fugues" 
 appeared. 
 
 " God Save the King " (Queen) first sung (?). 
 
 " Rule Britannia" composed. 
 
 First performance of Handel's " Messiah." 
 
 Handel wrote a "Te Deum" for the peace of 
 Dettingen. 
 
 Charles Dibdin, b. Southampton. Wrote the 
 "Waterman," "Tom Bowling," etc. 
 
 Giuseppe Guarnerius, d. Cremona. 
 
 Frat^ois Tourte, b. Paris. A great Violin-Bow 
 Maker. 
 
 Johann Sebastian Bach, d. Leipzig. 
 
 First performance of Handel's "Judas Macca- 
 bseus." 
 
 Sebastian Erard, b. Strasburg. Founder of the 
 firm of Pianoforte and Harp Makers of that 
 name. 
 
 8
 
 DATE. 
 
 1762 
 
 1753 
 
 1755 
 
 1756 
 
 1757 
 
 1759 
 1760 
 
 1761 
 
 1762 
 1763 
 
 1764 
 
 1765 
 1766 
 
 1767 
 
 Muzio Clementi, b. Rome. Professor, Pianist, 
 and Composer. 
 
 Giovanni Battista Viotti, b. Piedmont. Distin- 
 guished Violinist and Composer. 
 
 Federico Fiorillo, b. Brunswick. Violinist ; wrote 
 excellent studies for the Violin. 
 
 C. P. E. Bach instituted a new mode of fingering 
 for the Pianoforte. 
 
 Domenico Dragonetti, b. Vienna. A magnificent 
 Double bass player. 
 
 Francesco Durante, d. Naples. 
 
 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, b. Salzburg. Wrote 
 " Don Giovanni," " Figaro," and other world- 
 famed works. 
 
 Ignaz Pleyel, b. Vienna. Composer for the Piano- 
 forte, etc. 
 
 Domenico Scarlatti, d. Madrid. 
 
 Georg Friedrich Handel, d. London. 
 
 Haydn composed his first Symphony. 
 
 Maria Luigi S. Cherubini, b. Florence. Cele- 
 brated Theorist and Composer. 
 
 Harpsichords going out of fashion about this time. 
 
 Johann Ludwig Dussek, b. Bohemia. Wrote sev- 
 eral well-known Pianoforte pieces. 
 
 First performance of Gluck's " Orfeo." 
 
 Etienne Henri Mehul, b. France. Wrote the 
 Opera "Joseph" and other works. 
 
 Daniel Steibelt, b. Berlin. Composer of Piano- 
 forte Music. 
 
 Jean Philippe Rameau, d. Paris. 
 
 Friedrich Heinh. Himmel, b. Saxony. Composed 
 several Operas. 
 
 Samuel Wesley, b. Bristol. A writer of Anthems 
 and other works. 
 
 Rudolphe Kreutzer, b. Versailles. Celebrated 
 Violinist and Composer for the Violin. 
 
 First German musical periodical published. 
 
 Thomas Attwood, b. London. Wrote Anthems 
 and other Church Music. 
 
 Bernhard Romberg, b. Oldenbourg. Distinguished 
 Violoncellist and Composer.
 
 DATE. 
 
 1767 Andreas Romberg, b. Munster. Wrote Cantatas, 
 
 Operas, and Symphonies. 
 Nicolo Porpora, d. Rome. 
 First performance of Gluck's "Alceste." 
 
 1768 ' First Birmingham Musical Festival. 
 
 1770 Ludwig van Beethoven, b. Bonn. The greatest 
 
 of all musical composers. 
 First Musical Festival at Norwich. 
 
 1771 
 
 1774 
 
 1775 
 
 1777 
 1778 
 
 1779 
 1780 
 
 Pierre Bailliot, b. Paris. Celebrated Violinist 
 and Composer for the Violin. 
 
 Johann Baptist Cramer, b. Mannheim. Pro- 
 fessor, Pianist, and writer of splendid Piano- 
 forte studies. 
 
 Giuseppe Tartini, d. Padua. 
 
 Pierre Rode, b. Bordeaux. Celebrated Violinist 
 and Composer for the Violin. 
 
 John Braham, b. London. Distinguished Vocal- 
 ist; wrote "The Death of Nelson," etc. 
 
 First performance of Gluck's ' Iphigenia in 
 Aulis." 
 
 Dibdin's " Waterman" first produced. 
 
 Fran9ois Adrian Boieldieu, b. Rouen. Wrote 
 "La Dame Blanche" and other Operas. 
 
 Dr. William Crotch, b. Norwich. Wrote Ora- 
 torios, Motetts, and a treatise on " Harmony." 
 
 Manuel Garcia, b. Seville. Distinguished Operatic 
 Singer. 
 
 First Concert at the Hanover Square Rooms. 
 
 " Gluckists vs. Piccinnists " at Paris. 
 
 First performance of Gluck's "Armide." 
 
 Johann Nepomuk Hummel, b. Presburg. Cele- 
 brated Pianist and Composer. 
 
 Dr. Thomas Arne, d. London. 
 
 Dr. William Boyce, d. London. 
 
 Piccinni's " Roland" produced. 
 
 First performance of Gluck's "Iphigenia in 
 Auris." 
 
 Thomas Moore, b. Dublin. Celebrated for his 
 Irish Melodies. 
 
 Piccinni's "Atys" produced. 
 10
 
 DATE. 
 
 1781 Anton Diabelli, b. Salzburg. Wrote some good 
 
 pieces for the Pianoforte. 
 The " Gewandhaus Concert Hall," Leipzig, 
 
 opened. 
 Piccinni's "Iphigenia" produced. 
 
 1782 
 
 1783 
 1784 
 
 1785 
 1786 
 
 1786 
 
 1787 
 
 John Field, b. Dublin. Great Pianist; one of the 
 first to write "Nocturnes." 
 
 Daniel Fran. Esprit Auber, b. Normandy. Wrote 
 " Fra Diavolo," " Masaniello," and other 
 Operas. 
 
 Conradin Kreutzer, b. Baden. Composer of sev- 
 eral Operas and Masses. 
 
 Johann Adolph Hasse, d. Venice. 
 
 Piccinni's " Didon " produced. 
 
 Fran9ois Joseph F6tis, b. Belgium. Distinguished 
 writer on Musical History. 
 
 Ludwig Spohr, b. Brunswick. Celebrated Vio- 
 linist and Composer. 
 
 Friedrich Kalkbrenner, b. Berlin. Pianist and 
 Composer. 
 
 Gasparo Spontini, b. Ancona. Wrote " La Ves- 
 tale" and many other Operas. 
 
 Nicolo Paganini, b. Genoa. The greatest Vio- 
 linist who has ever lived. 
 
 Ferdinand Ries, b. Bonn. A distinguished pupil 
 of Beethoven's. 
 
 George Onslow, b. France. Composer of Sonatas 
 and other works. 
 
 Giambattista Martini, d. Bologna. 
 
 Great Handel Centenary Festival in England. 
 
 First Liverpool Musical Festival. 
 
 First performance of Mozart's " Figaro." 
 
 Sir Henry Rowley Bishop, b. London. Wrote 
 several English Operas and Songs, "Home, 
 Sweet Home," etc. 
 
 Friedrich Kuhlau. b. Hanover. Wrote Operas 
 and many good Pianoforte pieces. 
 
 Carl Maria v. Weber, b. Holstein. Wrote " Der 
 Freischiitz," "Oberon," and other great works. 
 
 Chris. Willibald v. Gluck, d. Vienna. 
 f U
 
 DATE. 
 
 1787 
 
 1788 
 1789 
 
 1790 
 
 1791 
 
 1792 
 
 1794 
 
 1795 
 
 1790 
 1797 
 
 First performance of Mozart's " Don Giovanni." 
 Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, d. Hamburg. 
 Robert Nicholas C. Bochsa, b. Montmedi. A 
 
 distinguished Harpist and Composer for the 
 
 Harp. 
 Friedrich Ernst Fesca, b. Magdeburg. Wrote 
 
 several Quartettes, Songs, etc. 
 Carl Joseph Lipinski, b. Poland. Distinguished 
 
 Violinist and Composer. 
 
 First performance of Mozart's " Cosi fan Tutte." 
 Ferdinand Herold, b. Paris. Wrote "Zampa" 
 
 and other Operas. 
 
 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, d. Vienna. 
 First performance of Mozart's " Magic Flute." 
 Sir John Hawkins, d. London. 
 Mozart wrote his " Requiem." 
 Haydn first came to England. 
 Gioacchimo Rossini, b. Pesaro. Great Operatic 
 
 Composer; " William Tell," "II Barbiere," 
 
 etc. 
 
 " Marseillaise" composed by Rouget de Lisle. 
 Cipriani Potter, b. London. A celebrated teacher 
 
 of the Pianoforte. 
 
 Moritz Haupttnann, b. Dresden. Professor, Com- 
 poser, and Theorist. 
 Jacques Fereol Mazas, b. France. Talented 
 
 Violinist and Composer for the Violin. 
 Giacomo Meyerbeer, b. Berlin. Great Operatic 
 
 Composer; "Huguenots," " Dinorah," etc. 
 Ignaz Moscheles, b. Prague. Professor, Pianist, 
 
 and Composer. 
 
 Carl Czerny, b. Vienna. Celebrated for his ex- 
 cellent Pianoforte studies. 
 Heinrich Marschner, b. Zittau. Wrote "Hans 
 
 Heiling" and other Operas. 
 Paris Conservatoire of Music founded. 
 Erard's first Horizontal Grand Pianoforte. 
 Saverio Mercadante, b. Naples. Composer of 
 
 several Operas. 
 
 12
 
 DATE. 
 
 1797 Gaetano Donizetti, b. Bergamo. Wrote " Ln- 
 crezia Borgia," "Lucia," and other favorite 
 Operas. 
 
 Franz Schubert, b. Vienna. Famed for his splen- 
 did Songs, Masses, and other great works. 
 
 1798 
 
 1799 
 
 1800 
 
 1801 
 1802 
 
 1803 
 
 1804 
 
 Giuditta Pasta (Madame), b. Como. A distin- 
 guished Singer. 
 
 Henry Bertini. b. London. Well known for his 
 excellent Pianoforte studies. 
 
 Haydn's Oratorio, "The Creation," finished. 
 
 "Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung" first pub- 
 lished. 
 
 Fran9ois Elie HaleVy, b. Paris. Wrote "La 
 Juive" and other Operas. 
 
 First performance of Boieldieu's " Caliph of Bag- 
 dad." 
 
 Sir John Goss, b. Hants. Theorist ; Composer 
 of splendid Church Music. 
 
 Niccolo Piccinni, d. Passy. 
 
 First performance of Cherubim's " Wassertrager." 
 
 Beethoven's First Symphony. 
 
 Vincenzo Bellini, b. Sicily. Wrote the operas 
 "Norma," " Sonnambula," "Puritani," etc. 
 
 Charles de Beriot, b. Belgium. Great Violinist 
 and Composer for the Violin. 
 
 Dr. Samuel Arnold, d. London. 
 
 Beethoven's Second Symphony. 
 
 Hector Berlioz, b. France. Wrote several Grand 
 Symphonies and Operas. 
 
 Bernhard Molique, b. Nurmem. Violinist and 
 Composer. 
 
 Charles Adolph Adam, b. Paris. Wrote " Pos 
 tillon de Lonjumeau " and other Operas. 
 
 Albert Lortzing, b. Berlin. Wrote " Czar und 
 Zimmermann" and other Operas. 
 
 Gaetan Pugnani, d. Turin. 
 
 Sir Julius Benedict, b. Stuttgart. Celebrated 
 Composer, Pianist, and Professor. 
 
 Johann Strauss (Sen.), b. Vienna. Prolific Com 
 poser of Dance Music. 
 
 13
 
 DATE. 
 
 1804 
 
 1805 
 
 1806 
 
 1807 
 1808 
 
 1809 
 
 1810 
 
 Franz Lachner, b. Bavaria. Composer of excel- 
 lent Symphonies, Suites, etc. 
 
 Johann Adam Hiller, d. Leipsig. 
 
 Beethoven's Third Symphony. 
 
 Luigi Boccherini, d. Madrid. 
 
 First performance of Beethoven's "Leonora." 
 (Fidelio.) 
 
 John Barnett, b. Bedford. Wrote an Opera, 
 " Fair Rosamond," and many other works. 
 
 Beethoven's Fourth Symphony. 
 
 Mehul's "Joseph" produced. 
 
 Michael William Balfe, b. Limerick. Distin- 
 guished Operatic Composer ; ' Bohemian Girl," 
 "Talisman," etc. 
 
 Maria Felicita Malibran (Mad.), b. Paris. Re- 
 nowned Operatic Singer. 
 
 Giuseppo Mario, b. Turin. Renowned Operatic 
 Singer. 
 
 Ernst Friedrich Richter, b. Zittau. Professor 
 and celebrated Theorist. 
 
 Wilhelmine Schroder- Devrient (Mad.), b. Ham- 
 burg. Celebrated Operatic Singer. 
 
 Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. 
 
 Beethoven's Sixth Symphony. 
 
 Felix Mendelssohn- Bartholdy, b. Hamburg. A 
 great Composer and Pianist. Wrote " St. 
 Paul," "Elijah," etc. 
 
 Joseph Haydn, d. Vienna. 
 
 Johann G. Albrechtsberger, d. Vienna. 
 
 Robert Schumann, b. Zwickau. Great Composer 
 of every description of Music. 
 
 Sir Michael Costa, b. Naples. Celebrated Con- 
 ductor and Composer. Wrote "Eli,'' " Naa- 
 man," etc. 
 
 Frederic Fran9ois Chopin, b. Warsaw. Distin- 
 guished Pianoforte Player and Composer. 
 
 Otto Nicolai, b. Konigsberg. Wrote " The Merry 
 Wives of Windsor" and other Operas. 
 
 Ferdinand David, b. Hamburg. Celebrated 
 Violinist, Composer, and Professor.
 
 DATE. 
 1810 
 
 1811 
 
 1812 
 
 1813 
 
 Ole Bull, b. Norway. Renowned Violinist. 
 
 Samuel Sebastian Wesley, b. London. Wrote 
 magnificent Anthems and other works. 
 
 Felicien David, b. France. Pianist and Composer. 
 
 Joseph Gungl, b. Hungary. A well-known 
 Composer of Dance Music. 
 
 Friedrich Wilhelm Klicken, b. Hanover. Re- 
 nowned for his Songs. 
 
 Franz Liszt, b. Hungary. An unrivaled Pianist 
 and great Composer. 
 
 Ambroise Thomas, b. Metz. Wrote " Mignon," 
 "Hamlet," and other Operas. 
 
 Ferdinand Hiller, b. Frankfort. Pianist, Pro- 
 fessor, Theorist, and Composer. 
 
 Wilhelm Taubert, b. Berlin. Pianist and Com- 
 poser ; has written some favorite Songs. 
 
 Giulia Grisi (Mad.), b. Milan. World-renowned 
 Singer. 
 
 Friedrich von Flotow, b. Mecklenburg. Wrote 
 " Martha" and other Operas. 
 
 Michael von Glinka, b. Moscow. Wrote "Life 
 for the Czar" and other Operas. 
 
 Sigismund Thalberg, b. Geneva. Celebrated 
 Pianoforte Player and Composer. 
 
 John Pyke Hullah, b. Worcester. Renowned 
 Teacher of Singing ; Writer and Critic. 
 
 Louis Autoine Jullien, b. Sisterron. Conductor 
 and Composer of Dance Music, etc. 
 
 Johann Ludwig Dussek, d. Paris. 
 
 Federico Fiorillo, d. Amsterdam. 
 
 Beethoven's Seventh Symphony. 
 
 Beethoven's Eighth Symphony. 
 
 Stephen Heller, b. Pesth. Well-known for his 
 charming Pianoforte Compositions. 
 
 Richard Wagner, b. Leipzig. The greatest 
 Dramatic Writer and Composer of the age. 
 
 Sir George MacFarren, b. London. Theorist, 
 Composer, and Professor. 
 
 Prosper Sainton, b. Toulouse. Renowned Vio- 
 linist. 
 
 15
 
 DATE. 
 1813 
 
 1814 
 
 1815 
 
 1816 
 
 1817 
 
 1818 
 
 Henry Smart, b. London. Composer of Churct 
 Music. 
 
 London " Philharmonic Society" founded. 
 
 Rossini's " Tancredi " first performed. 
 
 Giuseppe Verdi, b. Parma. Great Operatic Com- 
 poser, "Trovatore," "Traviata," "Aida," 
 
 6tC 
 
 Vincent Wallace, b. Waterford. Wrote " Mari- 
 tana," "Lurline," and other Operas. 
 
 Adolph Henselt, b. Bavaria. Distinguished 
 Pianoforte Player and Composer. 
 
 Theodor Dohler, b. Naples. Pianist and Com- 
 poser. 
 
 Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst, b. Moravia. A great 
 modern Violin Player and Composer. 
 
 Friedrich Heinh. Himmel, d. Berlin. 
 
 Charles Dibdin, d. London. 
 
 Robert Franz, b. Halle. Celebrated for his 
 Songs, etc. 
 
 Delphin Alard, b. Bayonne. Violinist and Com- 
 poser. 
 
 Robert Volkmann, b. Saxony. Distinguished 
 Composer of Symphonies, Suites, etc. 
 
 Schubert wrote " The Erl King." 
 
 Sir Wm. Sterndale Bennett, b. Sheffield. One of 
 England's greatest Musicians. 
 
 August Wilhelm Ambros, b. Bohemia. Wrote a 
 celebrated " History of Music." 
 
 First performance of Rossini's "II Barbiere di 
 Seviglia." 
 
 Niels Wilhelm Gade, b. Copenhagen. Has com- 
 posed Symphonies, Overtures, etc. 
 
 Ernst Camille Sivori, b. Genoa. Celebrated 
 Violinist. 
 
 Etienne Henri Mehul, d. Paris. 
 
 Charles Gounod, b. Paris. Distinguished Com- 
 poser, " Faust," "The Redemption," etc. 
 
 Clara Novello, b. London. Celebrated Singer. 
 
 Antonio Bazzini, b. Brescia. Talented Violinist 
 and Composer
 
 DATE. 
 1818 
 
 1819 
 
 1820 
 
 1821 
 
 Charles Dancla, b. France. Violinist and Com 
 poser. 
 
 Theodore Kullak, b. Posen. Professor, Com- 
 poser, and Critic. 
 
 Rossini's "Moses in Egypt" first performed. 
 
 First Musical Festival at Dlisseldorf. 
 
 First Musical Periodical in England, viz. : The 
 Quarterly Musical Magazine and Review. 
 
 Clara Schumann (Mad.), b. Leipzig. Distinguished 
 Pianiste. (Wife of Robert Schumann.) 
 
 Charles Halle, b. Westphalia. Celebrated as a 
 Pianist and Conductor. 
 
 Franz Abt, b. Eilenburg. Well-known for his 
 Songs. 
 
 Hubert Leonard, b. Belgium. Distinguished 
 Violinist and Composer. 
 
 Brinley Richards, b. Caermarthen. Pianist. 
 Composed " God Bless the Prince of Wales." 
 
 Jacques Offenbach, b. Cologne. Celebrated for 
 his Operettas, "The Grand Duchess," etc. 
 
 Henri Vieuxtemps, b. Belgium. Renowned Vio- 
 linist and Composer- 
 Enrico Tamberlik, b Rome. Celebrated Singer. 
 
 Franz von Suppe, b. Dalmatia. Writer of Operet- 
 tas, " Die schone Galatea," "Fatinitza," etc. 
 
 Louis Kohler, b. Brunswick. Well-known for his 
 Pianoforte Studies. 
 
 Sir George Grove, b. London. Distinguished 
 Musical Critic and Writer. 
 
 Henry Charles Litolff, b. London. Talented 
 Pianistand Composer. 
 
 Spohr conducted at the London Philharmonic 
 Concerts. 
 
 Liszt first played in public. 
 
 John Sims Reeves, b. Woolwich. England's 
 greatest Tenor Vocalist. 
 
 Jenny Lind (Mad.), b. Stockholm. Renowned 
 Singer in Operas and Oratorios. 
 
 Charlotte Sainton-Dolby (Mad.), b. London. 
 Celebrated Singer, Teacher, and Composer. 
 17
 
 1821 ' Pauline Viardot Garcia (Mad.), t>. Paris. Re- 
 nowned Operatic Singer. 
 Andreas Romberg, d. Gotha. 
 First Performance of Weber's " Der Freyschiitz." 
 
 1822 
 
 Joachim Raff, b. Lachen. Distinguished Com- 
 
 poser of Symphonies, etc. 
 | Henry Wylde, b. Herts. Distinguished Professor 
 
 and Lecturer. 
 i Henry Leslie, b. London. Well-known for his 
 
 Part Songs, etc. 
 Felix Maria Victor Masse, b. France. Wrote 
 
 " Paul et Virginie" and other Operas. 
 London "Royal Academy of Music" founded. 
 
 1823 Alfredo Piatti, b. Bergamo. The greatest living 
 
 Violoncellist. 
 Giovanni Bottesini, b. Lombardy. The greatest 
 
 player of the Double Bass. 
 Daniel Steibelt, d. St. Petersburg. 
 First performance of Weber's " Euryanthe." 
 First performance of Spohr's " Jesaonda." 
 First performance of Rossini's " Semiramide." 
 
 1824 Carl Reinecke, b. Altona. Renowned Pianist, 
 
 Conductor, and Composer. 
 Marietta Alboni (Mad.), b. Italy. Celebrated 
 
 Contralto Vocalist. 
 Thepdor Kirchner, b. Saxony. Composer of 
 
 Pianoforte Music, etc. 
 Giovanni Battista Viotti, d. London. 
 Beethoven's Choral Symphony. 
 First of the Triennial Festivals at Norwich. 
 
 1825 August Manns, b. North Germany. Distinguished 
 
 Conductor of the Crystal Palace Concerts. 
 Johann Strauss (Jun.), b. Vienna. Writer of 
 
 Comic Operas, "Fledermaus," etc. 
 Sir Fred. A. Gore-Ousley, b. London. Writer 
 
 of Anthems and other Church Music. 
 Boieldieu's ''La Dame Blanche" produced. 
 
 1826 John Thomas, b. Bridgend. Distinguished Harpist 
 
 and Composer.
 
 PATE. 
 
 1826 
 
 1827 
 
 1828 
 1829 
 
 1830 
 
 1831 
 
 Ernst Pauer, b. Vienna. Composer, Pianist, and 
 Professor. 
 
 William Thomas Best, b. Carlisle. Celebrated 
 Organist. 
 
 Carl Maria v. Weber, d. London. 
 
 Friedrich Ernst Fesca, d. Carlsruhe. 
 
 Weber came to London and produced his 
 "Oberon." 
 
 Ludwig van Beethoven, d. Vienna. 
 
 Mendelssohn's Overture to " Midsummer Night's 
 Dream." 
 
 Franz Schubert, d. Vienna. 
 
 Auber's " Masaniello" first produced. 
 
 Anton Rubinstein, b. Moscow. Renowned Pianist 
 and Composer. 
 
 Jacques Blumenthal, b. Hamburg. Pianist, and 
 well-known for his Songs, etc. 
 
 Louis Moritz Gottschalk, b. New York. Pianist 
 and Composer. 
 
 First performance of Rossini's " William Tell." 
 
 Mendelssohn first visited England. 
 
 Hans Guido von Billow, b. Dresden. Distin- 
 guished Pianist and Conductor. 
 
 Alfred Jaell, b. Trieste. An excellent Pianist. 
 
 Carl Goldmark, b. Hungary. Wrote " The Queen 
 of Sheba" and other Operas, etc. 
 
 Louis Ries, b. Berlin. Violinist at the " Monday 
 Popular Concerts," etc. 
 
 Sir Herbert Stanley Oakeley, b. Baling. Organ- 
 ist and well-known Composer of Church 
 Music. 
 
 Pierre Rode, d. Bordeaux. 
 
 Spohr's "Last Judgment" produced at Norwich 
 Festival. 
 
 Auber's " Fra Diavolo" first produced. 
 
 Joseph Joachim, b. Hungary. Renowned Vio- 
 linist and Composer. 
 
 Albert Niemann, b. Magdeburg. A celebrated 
 Tenor Vocalist. 
 
 19
 
 1831 Therese Tietjens (Mdlle.), b. Hamburg. Re- 
 nowned Singer in Operas and Oratorios. 
 
 Dr. Ludwig Nohl, b. Westphalia. Well-known 
 for his Musical Biographies. 
 
 Joseph Ascher, b. London. A favorite Piamst 
 and Composer. 
 
 Joseph Bennett, b. Gloucestershire. Distin- 
 guished Musical Critic. 
 
 Rudolph Kreutzer, d. Geneva. 
 
 Sebastian Erard, d. Paris. 
 
 Ignaz Pleyel, d. Paris. 
 
 Meyerbeer's " Robert le Diable " first produced. 
 
 Paganini's first appearance in England. 
 
 Bellini's " La Sonnambula" first produced. 
 
 Herold's "Zampa" first produced. 
 
 1832 
 
 1833 
 
 1834 
 
 Alberto Randegger, b. Trieste. Teacher of Sing- 
 ing, Composer, and Conductor. 
 
 Frederic Louis Ritter, b. Strasburg Has written 
 an excellent " History of Music," etc. 
 
 Dr. Leopold Damrosch, b. Posen. Eminent 
 Conductor. 
 
 Muzio Clementi, d. London. 
 
 " Sacred Harmonic Society" (London) founded. 
 
 Manuel Garcia, d. Paris. 
 
 Donizetti's " Elisir d'Amore " first produced. 
 
 Friedrich Kuhlau, d. Copenhagen. 
 
 Johannes Brahms, b. Hamburg. The greatest 
 Classic Composer of the age. 
 
 David Faure, b. Moulins. Distinguished Singer. 
 
 Ferdinand Herold, d. Paris. 
 
 Spohr's Symphony, "The Power of Sound," pro 
 duced. 
 
 MarschnerV" Hans Helling " produced. 
 
 Mendelssohn first conducted the Diisseldorf 
 Festivals. 
 
 Charles Santley, b. Liverpool. Renowned Bary- 
 tone Vocalist. 
 
 Charles Lecocq, b. Paris. Writer of Comic 
 Operas, " Girofl6 Girofla," etc. 
 
 20
 
 DATE. 
 
 1834 
 
 1835 
 
 1836 
 
 1837 
 
 Theo. C. Salome, b. Paris. Organist and Com- 
 poser. 
 
 Francois Adrien Boieldieu, d. Near Paris, 
 
 Donizetti's " Lucrezia Borgia" produced. 
 
 Henri Wieniawski, b. Poland. Renowned Vio- 
 linist and Composer. 
 
 Ebenezer Prout, b. Northamptonshire. Excel- 
 lent Composer and Critic. 
 
 Camille Saint-Saens, b. Pans. Distinguished 
 Composer and Pianist. 
 
 Ludwig Straus, b. Presburg. Violinist at the 
 " Monday Popular Concerts," etc. 
 
 Theodore Thomas, b. Hanover. CelebratedCon- 
 ductor in America. 
 
 William Hayman Cummings, b. Devonshire. 
 Vocalist, Composer, and Writer on Music. 
 
 Vincenzo Bellini, d. Paris. 
 
 Ha levy's "La Juive " first produced. 
 
 Francois Tourte, d. Paris. 
 
 Donizetti's "Lucia di Lammermoor" first pro- 
 duced. 
 
 Balfe's "Siege of Rochelle " first produced. 
 
 John Tiplady Carrodus, b. Yorkshire. One of 
 England's greatest Violinists. 
 
 Arabella Goddard (Mad.), b. Brittany. Cele- 
 brated Pianist. 
 
 Maria Felicita Malibran (Mad.), d. Manches- 
 ter. 
 
 First performance of Mendelssohn's " St. Paul." 
 
 Meyerbeer's " Les Huguenots " first produced. 
 
 " The Musical World " first published. 
 
 Adolph Jensen, b. Kb'nigsberg. Composer of 
 Songs and Pianoforte Music. 
 
 Alexander Guilmant, b. Boulogne. Great Or- 
 ganist and Composer. 
 
 Johann Nepomuk Hummel, d. Weimar. 
 
 Bristol " Madrigal Society" founded. 
 
 Samuel Wesley, d. London. 
 
 John Field, d Moscow.
 
 DATE. 
 
 1837 
 1838 
 
 1839 
 
 1840 
 
 Nicolo Antonio Zingarelli, d. Torre de Greco. 
 
 George Bizet, b. Paris. Wrote the Opera of 
 " Carmen," and others works. 
 
 Ludwig Burreu, b. Berlm. Composer and 
 Author. 
 
 Joseph Barnby, b. York. Distinguished Com- 
 poser and Conductor. 
 
 Zelia Trebelli (Mad.), b. Pans. Renowned Con 
 tralto Vocalist. 
 
 John Francis Barnett, b. London. Composer of 
 " The Ancient Mariner," and other works. 
 
 Max Bruch, b. Colognei An eminent modern 
 Composer. 
 
 Berthold Tours, b. Rotterdam. Composer of 
 Church Music, Songs, etc. 
 
 Ferdinand Ries, d. Frankfort. 
 
 Thomas Attwood, d. London. 
 
 Donizetti's "La Fille du Regiment" first pro- 
 duced, 
 
 Wilhelmine Norman Neruda (Mad.), b. Moravia. 
 Renowned Violinist. 
 
 Joseph Rheinberger, b. Lichtenstein. Eminent 
 Composer. 
 
 Berlioz's Symphony, " Romeo e Juliette," pro- 
 duced. 
 
 Sims Reeves appeared as a Barytone at Norwich. 
 
 Hermann Goetz, b. Kb'nigsberg. Wrote " The 
 Taming of the Shrew" and other works. 
 
 Johann Severin Svendsen, b. Christiana. An 
 excellent Composer of Symphonies, etc. 
 
 Xaver Scharwenka, b. East Prussia. Good 
 Pianist and modern Composer. 
 
 Louis de Brassin, b, Brussels. Celebrated Pianist. 
 
 Dr. John Stainer, b. London. Renowned Organ- 
 ist and Theorist. 
 
 Frederic Clay, b. Paris. Writer of Operas, Songs, 
 etc. 
 
 Nicolo Paganini, d. Nice. 
 
 Liverpool " Philharmonic Society " founded. 
 
 22
 
 DATE. 
 1840 
 
 1841 
 
 1842 
 
 1843 
 
 Mendelssohn's " Hymn of Praise" produced. 
 
 Carl Tausig, b. Warsaw. A great Pianist. 
 
 Antonin Dvorak, b. Bohemia. A splendid mod- 
 ern Composer. 
 
 Ignaz Brlill, b. Vienna. A talented Pianist and 
 Composer. 
 
 Victor Nessler, b. Baer. Wrote "The Piper of 
 Hamelin" and other works. 
 
 Dr. Julius Spitta, b. Wechold. Critic and Author. 
 
 Bernhard Romberg, d. Hamburg. 
 
 Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan, b. London. Re- 
 nowned Composer of Oratorios, Operas, etc. 
 
 Pauline Lucca (Mad.), b. Vienna. Celebrated 
 Operatic Vocalist. 
 
 Edmond Audran, b. Lyons. Celebrated Composer. 
 
 Janet Patey (Mad.), b. London. Distinguished 
 Contralto Vocalist. 
 
 Arrigo Boito, b. Padua. Composer and Poet. 
 
 Heinrich Hofman, b. Berlin. Talented vocal 
 and instrumental Composer. 
 
 Walter Bache, b. Birmingham. An excellent 
 Pianist. 
 
 Jules Massenet, b. France. Composer of "Le 
 Roi de Lahore " and other works. 
 
 Salvator Cherubim, d. Paris. 
 
 Pierre Bailliot, d. Near Paris. 
 
 First performance of Wagner's " Rienzi." 
 
 Spohr's "Fall of Babylon" produced at Nor- 
 wich Festival. 
 
 New York " Philharmonic Society " founded. 
 
 Carl Augustus Nicolas Rosa, b. Hamburg. Emi- 
 nent Conductor of the "Carl Rosa Opera 
 Company." 
 
 Adelina Patti (Mad.), b. Madrid. The greatest 
 Operatic Singer of the age. 
 
 Edvard Grieg, b. Norway. Talented modern 
 Composer. 
 
 Giovanni Sqambatti, b. Rome. Eminent Pianist 
 and Composer. 
 
 23
 
 DATE 
 
 1843 
 
 1844 
 
 1845 
 
 1846 
 
 1847 
 
 Hans Richter, b. Hungary. Renowned Con- 
 ductor. 
 
 Christina Nilsson (Mad.), b. Sweden. Celebrated 
 Soprano Vocalist. 
 
 First performance of Wagner's "Flying Dutch- 
 man." 
 
 First performance of Balfe's !i Bohemian Girl." 
 
 "Royal Conservatoire of Music," Leipzig, 
 founded. 
 
 Edward Dannreuther, b. Strasburg Eminent 
 Pianist, Conductor, and Critic. 
 
 Oscar Beringer, b. Baden. Talented Pianist. 
 
 Pablo Sarasate, b. Pampeluna. Great Violinist. 
 
 First performance of Verdi's " Ernani." " Musi- 
 cal Times" first issued. 
 
 Joachim's first appearance in London. 
 
 Auguste Wilhelmj, b Nassau. A great Violinist. 
 
 Edward Lloyd, b. London Celebrated Tenor 
 Vocalist. 
 
 First performance of Wagner's "Tannhauser." 
 
 David Popper, b. Prague. Talented Violoncellist 
 and Composer. 
 
 Franz Ries, b. Berlin. ' Violinist and Composer. 
 
 Marie Roze (Mad.), b. Paris. Brilliant Operatic 
 Singer. 
 
 Thomas Wingham, b. London. Talented Com- 
 poser. 
 
 Anna Mehlig (Mdlle ), Stuttgart. Distinguished 
 Pianiste. 
 
 Domenico Dragonetti, d. London. 
 
 Job. Ch. Rinck, d. Darmstadt. 
 
 Mendelssohn's "Elijah" produced at Birming- 
 ham Festival. 
 
 First performance of Wallace's " Maritana." 
 
 Alexander Campbell Mackenzie, b. Edinburgh. 
 Celebrated Composer, "Colomba," "Rose 
 of Sharon," etc. 
 
 Philip Scharwenka, b. Posen. Composer and 
 Teacher. 
 
 24
 
 DATE. 
 
 1847 Agnes Zimmermann (Mdlle.), b. Cologne. Ex 
 
 cellent Pianiste. 
 Charles Swinnerton Heap, b. Birmingham. 
 
 Talented Composer. 
 
 Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, d. Leipzig. 
 Dr. William Crotch, d. Taunton. 
 First performance of Meyerbeer's " Huguenots." 
 Sims Reeves' first appearance in Opera at Drury 
 
 Lane. 
 
 1848 
 
 1849 
 
 1850 
 
 Sophie Menter (Mad.), b. Munich. Celebrated 
 
 Pianiste. 
 Charles Hubert Parry, b. Gloucester. Talented 
 
 Composer and Theorist. 
 Gaetano Donizetti, d. Bergamo. 
 Irish " Royal Academy of Music " founded. 
 Chopin first came to England. 
 First performance of Flotow's " Martha." 
 First performance of Nicolai's " Merry Wives of 
 
 Windsor." 
 William Shakespeare, b. Croydon. Eminent 
 
 Vocalist, Conductor, and Composer. 
 Dr. Hugo Riemann, b. Grossmeba. Learned 
 
 Writer. 
 
 Johann Strauss (Sen.), d Vienna. 
 Jacques Fereol Mazas, d. France. 
 Frederic Fran9ois Chopin, d. Paris. 
 Otto Nicolai, d. Berlin. 
 Friedrich Kalkbrenner. d. Paris. 
 Couradin Kreutzer, d. Riga. 
 Emma Albani (Mad.), b. America. Brilliant 
 
 Singer in Opera and Oratorio. 
 Xaver Scharwenka, b. Posen. Composer and 
 
 Pianist. 
 Annette Essipoff (Mad.), b. St. Petersburg. 
 
 Talented Pianist. 
 George Henschel, b. Breslau. Talented Singer 
 
 and Composer. 
 
 Antoinette Sterling (Mad.), b. New York. Well- 
 known Contralto Vocalist. 
 
 2o
 
 DATE. 
 
 1850 
 1851 
 
 1852 
 
 1853 
 
 1854 
 
 1855 
 
 1856 
 
 First performance of Waguei's " Lohengrin. " 
 
 Mary Krebs (Miss), b. Dresden. Distinguished 
 Pianists. 
 
 Arthur Goring Thomas, b. Sussex. Wrote the 
 Opera " Esmeralda, " and other splendid works. 
 
 Albert Lortzing, d. Berlin. 
 
 First Performance of Verdi's " Rigoletto. " 
 
 Gasparo Spontini, d. Ancona. 
 
 Emile Sauret, b. France. Celebrated Violinist. 
 
 Charles Villiers Standford, b. Dublin. Excel- 
 lent Composer of Oratorios, Quartettes, etc. 
 
 Frederic Hymen Cowen, b. Jamaica. Talented 
 and popular Composer. 
 
 Raphael Josefiy, b. Presburg. Excellent Pian- 
 ist. 
 
 Minnie Hauk (Mad.), b. New York. Brilliant 
 Operatic Singer. 
 
 Thomas Moore, d. Devizes. 
 
 A. B. Furstenau, d. Dresden. 
 
 George Onslow, France. Died 1853. 
 
 Franz Hummel, b. London. Eminent Pianist. 
 
 Verdi's " Trovatore " and "Traviata" first pro- 
 duced. 
 
 Moritz Moskowski, b. Berlin. Eminent Modern 
 Composer. 
 
 Henrietta Sontag, d. Mexico. 
 
 Bach's " Passion Music " first performed in 
 England. 
 
 Maude Valeria White (Miss), b. Dieppe. Tal- 
 ented Composer of Songs. 
 
 Sir Henry Rowley Bishop, d London. 
 
 Crystal Palace Saturday Concerts instituted. 
 
 Robert Nicolas Charles Bochsa, d. Sydney. 
 
 Costa' s "Eli" produced at the Birmingham 
 Festival. 
 
 Wagner conducted the London Philharmonic 
 Concerts. 
 
 Nathalie Janotha (Mdlle.), b. Warsaw. Dis- 
 tinguished Pianiste. 
 
 26
 
 DATE. 
 
 1856 
 
 1857 
 
 1858 
 
 1859 
 
 1860 
 
 1861 
 
 1862 
 
 1863 
 1864 
 
 Robert Schumann, d. near Bonn. 
 
 Theodor DiJhler, d. Florence. 
 
 John Braham, d. London. 
 
 Charles Adolph Adam, d. Paris. 
 
 Carl Czerny, d. Vienna. 
 
 First Handel Festival at the Crystal Palace. 
 
 Michael Von Glinka, b. Berlin. 
 
 Rubinstein's tirst public appearance in London. 
 
 Johann Baptist Cramer, d. London. 
 
 St. James' Concert Hall (London) opened. 
 
 Anton Diabelli, d. Vienna. 
 
 First Leeds Musical Festival. 
 
 Sigismund Neukomm, d. Paris. 
 
 Bennett's "May Queen" produced at Leeds Fes- 
 tival. 
 
 Luigi Lablache, d. Naples. 
 
 Tietjens' first appearance in London. 
 
 Ludwig Spohr, d. Cassel. 
 
 First performance of Gounod's " Faust. " 
 
 " Monday Popular Coneerts " (London) instituted. 
 
 Louis Antoine Jullien, d. Paris. 
 
 Macfarren's Opera, " Robin Hood," produced. 
 
 Wilhelmine Schroder Devrient (Madame), b. 
 Coburg 
 
 Wallace's "Lurline" produced. 
 
 Heinrich Marschner, d. Hanover. 
 
 London Academy of Music (St. George's Hall) 
 first opened. 
 
 Carl Joseph Lipinski, d. Austria. 
 
 Patti's first appearance in London. 
 
 Francois Elie Halevy, d. Nice. 
 
 Sullivan's Music to the " Tempest " first per 
 formed. 
 
 Benedict's *' Lily of Killarney" first performed. 
 
 Josef Mayseder, d. Vienna. 
 
 A. F. Hesse, d, Breslau. 
 
 Eugene D' Albert, b. England? Talented young 
 Pianist and Composer. 
 
 Giacomo Meyerbeer, d. Paris. 
 
 27
 
 DATE 
 
 1864 
 
 1865 
 
 1866 
 
 1867 
 
 1868 
 
 1869 
 
 1870 
 
 Anton Schindler, d. Bockenheim. 
 
 'College of Organists" instituted. 
 
 Costa's '"Naaman" produced at the Birmingham 
 Festival 
 
 Christine Nilsson's first appearance. 
 
 Vincent Wallace, d. South of France. 
 
 Giuditta Pasta, d. Como. 
 
 Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst, d. Nice. 
 
 First performance of Wagner's " Tristan and 
 Isolde." 
 
 "Saturday Popular Concerts" (London) instituted 
 
 J. W. Kalliwoda, d. Carlsruhe. 
 
 Dr. Adolph Max, d. Berlin. 
 
 Ambroise Thomas' " Mignon " produced. 
 
 G. Pacini, b. Persia. 
 
 Bennett's "Woman of Samaria" produced at 
 Birmingham Festival. 
 
 Gioachomo Rossini, d. Paris. 
 
 Sir George Smart, d. London. 
 
 Moritz Hauptmann, d. Leipzig. 
 
 Alexander Dreyschock, d. Venice. 
 
 First performance of Wagner's " Meistersinger. " 
 
 Ambroise Thomas' " Hamlet " produced. 
 
 Sallivan's "Prodigal Son" produced at Wor- 
 cester Festival. 
 
 Hector Berlioz, d. Paris. 
 
 Lefebvre Wely, d. Paris. 
 
 Louis Moritz Gottschalk, d. Rio de Janeiro. 
 
 Bernhard Molique, d. Stuttgart. 
 
 Joseph Ascher, d. London. 
 
 Giulia Grisi, d. Berlin. 
 
 First performance of Wagner's " Rheingold. " 
 
 Charles de Beriot, d. Brussels. 
 
 Michael William Balfe, d. Hertfordshire. 
 
 Saverio Mercadante, d. Naples. 
 
 Ignaz Moscheles, d. Leipzig. 
 
 First performance of Wagner's " Walkiire. " 
 
 Benedict's "St. Peter" produced at Birming- 
 ham Festival.
 
 DATE. 
 1870 
 
 1871 
 
 1872 
 
 1873 
 1874 
 
 1875 
 
 1876 
 
 1877 
 
 Wagner's " Flying Dutchman" given in England. 
 
 Carl Tausig, d. Leipzig. 
 
 " Royal Albert Hall " (London) opened. 
 
 Cipriani Potter, d. London. 
 
 Sigismund Thalberg, d. Naples. 
 
 Daniel Fran9ois Esprit Auber, d. Paris. 
 
 Fran9ois Joseph Fetis, d. Brussels. 
 
 "Trinity College" (London) instituted. 
 
 Freidrich Wieck, d. Dresden. 
 
 Ferdinand David, d. near Leipzig. 
 
 First Bristol Triennial Festival. 
 
 First performance of Balfe's " II Talismano. " 
 
 Grand New Wagner Opera House opened at Bay- 
 reuth. 
 
 First performance of Bizet's " Carmen. " 
 
 Last Concert at the Hanover Square Rooms. 
 
 Sir Wm. Sterndale Bennett, d. London. 
 
 George Bizet, d. Paris. 
 
 J. P. Pixis, d. Baden Baden. 
 
 New Opera House opened at Paris 
 
 Wagner's " Lohengrin '' given in England. 
 
 Rubinstein's Opera, "The Demon," first pro- 
 duced. 
 
 Rubinstein's Opera, " The Maccabees, " first pro- 
 duced. 
 
 Samuel Sebastian Wesley, d. Gloucester. 
 
 A. E. Batiste, d. Paris. 
 
 Felicien David, d. Aix. 
 
 Henri Bertini, d. Meylan. 
 
 Ed. Runbaut, d. London. 
 
 August Wilhelm Ambros, d. Prague. 
 
 Hermann Goetz, d. Zurich. 
 
 First performance at Bayreuth of Wagner's Gr*at 
 Trilogy, " Der Ring des Nibelungen. " 
 
 "National Training School of Music (London) 
 opened. 
 
 Wagner's " Tannhauser " given in England. 
 
 Therese Tietjens (Mdlle. ), d. London. 
 
 Wagner Festival at the Royal Albert Hall. 
 29
 
 DATE. 
 
 1877 
 
 1879 
 
 1880 
 
 1881 
 1882 
 
 1883 
 
 1884 
 
 Macfarren's "Joseph" produced at Leeds Fes- 
 tival. 
 
 Joachim made a " Doctor of Music " at Cam- 
 bridge. 
 
 Ernst Friedrich Richter, d. Leipzig. 
 
 Henry Smart, d. London. 
 
 Wilhelm Taubert, d Germany. (?) 
 
 Adolph Jensen, d. Baden Baden. 
 
 Wagner's "Rienzi" given in London, 
 
 Sir John Goss, d. London. 
 
 Ole Bull, d. Norway. 
 
 Jacques Offenbach, d. P&ris. 
 
 Henri Wieniawski, d. Moscow. 
 
 Rev John Curwen. d. Manchester. 
 
 Sir John Goss, d. Brixton. 
 
 "Guildhall School of Music " instituted. 
 
 Henri Vieuxtemps, d. Algiers. 
 
 Rubinstein's " The Demon" given in London. 
 
 Theodor Kullak. d. Berlin. 
 
 Alfred Jaell, d. Paris 
 
 Friedrich Wilhelm Kiicken, d. Schwerin. 
 
 Joachim Raff. d. Frankfort. 
 
 Wagner's " Nibelungen "given in London. 
 
 Fiftieth Jubilee of the " Sacred Harmonic 
 Society." 
 
 Wagner's " Tristan and Isolde, " and " Meister- 
 singer, " given in London. 
 
 Gounod's "Redemption" produced at the Bir- 
 mingham Festival. 
 
 First performance of Wagner's "Parsifal. " 
 
 Friedrich von Flotow, d. Wiesbaden. 
 
 Albert Franz Dopple. d. Vienna. 
 
 Richard Wagner, d. Venice. 
 
 Robert Volkmann, d. Buda-Pesth. 
 
 " Royal College of Music" (London) instituted. 
 
 First performance of Mackenzie's " Colomba. " 
 
 First performance of Goring Thomas' " Esmer- 
 alda. " 
 
 Giuseppe Mario, d. Rome, 
 so
 
 DATE. 
 
 1884 
 
 1885 
 
 1886 
 1887 
 
 1888 
 
 1889 
 
 1890 
 
 1891 
 
 1892 
 
 Sir Michael Costa, d. Brighton. 
 
 John Pyke Hullah, d. London. 
 
 Felix Maria Victor Masse, b. Paris. 
 
 Mackenzie's " Colomba " given in Germany. 
 
 First performance of Rubinstein's " Nero. " 
 
 Production at Hamburg of Stanford's " Savon- 
 arola. ' ' 
 
 First performance of Mackenzie's ''Rose of 
 Sharon." 
 
 Charlotte Sainton-Dolby (Madame), d. London. 
 
 Ferdinand Hiller, d. Cologne. 
 
 Franz Abt, d. Wiesbaden. 
 
 Brinley Richards, d. London. 
 
 Dr. Leopold Damrosch, d. New York. 
 
 Sir Julius Benedict, d. London. 
 
 Gustav Meikel, d. Dresden. 
 
 Handel and Bach Bi- Centenary Festivals. 
 
 Gounod's " Mors et Vita" produced at Binning 
 ham Festival. 
 
 Franz Liszt, d. Weimer. 
 
 Jenny Lind Goldschmidt, d. Wynd's Point, Mal- 
 vern. 
 
 G. A. MacFarren, d. London. 
 
 Wilhelm Valentin Volckmar, d. Hamburg. 
 
 Stephen Heller, d. Paris. 
 
 Henri Herz, d. Paris. 
 
 Diephin Alard, d. Paris. 
 
 Gustav Schumann, d. Berlin. 
 
 Adolphe Henselt, d. Warmbrunn. 
 
 Sir Frederick Gore Ouseley, d. Hereford. 
 
 Neils Gade, d. Copenhagen. 
 
 Franz Lachner, d. Munich. 
 
 Giovanni Bottesini, d. Parma. 
 
 Herm. Litolff, d. Paris. 
 
 Delibes, d. Paris. 
 
 Charles G. W. Saubert, d. Berlin. 
 
 Freidrich Louis Ritter, d. Antwerp. 
 
 Giulio Alary, d. Paris. 
 
 Robert Franz, d. Halle. 
 
 31
 
 BATE. 
 
 1892 
 1893 
 
 1894 
 
 Heinrich Dorn, d. Berlin. 
 
 Francesco Lamperti, d. Milan. 
 
 Charles Fran9<>is Gounod, d. Paris. 
 
 Peter Tschaikowsky, d. St. Petersburg. 
 
 Sir George Elvey, d. Windsor. 
 
 Alfred Jaell, d. Cairo. 
 
 Ernst Camille Sivori, Violinist, d. Genoa. 
 
 Francisco Asenjo Barbiere, Composer and Au 
 
 Ihor, d. Madrid. 
 Hans von Buelow, d. Cairo. 
 Madame Janet Patey, Contralto, d. London. 
 John Henry Cornell, Theorist and Author, d. 
 
 New York. 
 Otto Singer, d. New York.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Preface , ..<, iii 
 
 Introduction . . . . vii 
 
 Oriental and Ancient Music I 
 
 The First Ten Centuries of Christian Music. 9 
 
 From Guido of Arezzo to the Beginning of the Supremacy of 
 
 the Netherlander, about 1000 to 1400 19 
 
 The Epoch of the Netherlanders, about 1400 to 1600 27 
 
 The Rise of Dramatic Music, 1600 37 
 
 The Beginning of Oratorio, 1600 46 
 
 General Survey of the Musical Situation at the End of the Six- 
 teenth Century. Condition of Instrumental Music 52 
 
 The Progress of Opera , 64 
 
 Music in the Seventeenth Century 75 
 
 Music in the Seventeenth Century (Concluded) 83 
 
 Italian Opera from Alessandro Scarlatti to the Present 91 
 
 French Opera from Lully's Time to the Present 101 
 
 German Opera 109 
 
 The Opera : Summary and Outlook 128 
 
 Oratorio, Cantata, Passion Music and Sacred Music from 1700 
 
 to the Present 133 
 
 The Development of the Song 141 
 
 Instrumental Music from 1700 to the Present 145 
 
 Conclusion - ... 164 
 
 Progress from 1887 to 1894 169 
 
 A Comparative Table of Chronology , 180
 
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