After this, half a century went by before the Singspiel is heard of again. In 1743 the Döbbelin company in Berlin produced without success a German Liederspiel, 'Der Teufel ist los,' founded on the English piece 'The Devil to pay,' followed by Schürer's 'Doris' (1747) and Scheibe's 'Thusnelda' (1749), both very successful. Thus encouraged, Koch's company began to play Singspiele in Leipzig, Weimar, and Berlin, their first piece being 'Die verwandelten Weiber,' another version of the 'Devil to pay,' written by C. F. Weisse, composed by J. A. Hiller, and produced at Leipzig in 1764 with great success. The same authors produced a succession of similar pieces, 'Der lustige Schuster' (1765), 'Lottchen am Hofe,' and 'Die Liebe auf dem Lande' (1767), 'Die Jagd' (1771), 'Aerndtekranz' and 'Der Dorfbarbier' (1772). Neefe, Reichardt, Stegemann, Schweitzer, and others, brought to perfection this new species, now called Operetta.
Independently of all this going on in North Germany, the German Singspiel had sprung up in Vienna, starting curiously enough with 'Die doppelte Verwandlung' (1767), an adaptation from the French 'Le Diable à quatre,' Sédaine's version of 'The Devil to pay.' Werner, Haydn's predecessor at Eisenstadt, had already produced at the Court German Theatre a Tafelstück (i.e. piece intended for private performance) called 'Der Wienerische Tändelmarkt' (1760). The marionette plays, of which Haydn was so fond, were Singspiele, and he supplied the court of Esterhaz with 'Philemon und Baucis' (1773), 'Genoveva' (1777), 'Dido,' a parody on a grand opera (1778), and 'Die erfüllte Rache' (1780). 'Der krumme Teufel,' to words by Kurz, was a real Singspiel. Dittersdorf's 'Doctor und Apotheker,' 'Liebe im Narrenhause,' 'Hieronymus Knicker,' 'Rothe Käppchen,' etc., produced at the Imperial Nationaltheater, were brilliant successes. Kauer (1751–1831) composed no fewer than 200 Singspiele, and Schenk was almost equally prolific. The classic Singspiel was founded by Mozart with his 'Entführung' (July 12, 1782), which according to Goethe threw everything else of the kind into the shade; though whether one is justified in calling it a Singspiel at all is a moot point, the dramatic importance of the music seeming to entitle it to rank as an opera. Even the 'Zauberflöte' (1791) was styled a Singspiel on the title-page of the PF. score. From this point the Singspiel proper becomes continually rarer, though Wenzel Müller's 'Schwester von Prag,' 'Das neue Sonntagskind,' and a few more deserve mention. Lortzing's works are a mixture of opera and Singspiel, certain numbers in the 'Czar und Zimmermann,' 'Waffenschmied,' and 'Undine' being quite in the Lied-style, and the music consequently of secondary importance, while in others the music undoubtedly assists in developing the characters, and raises these portions to the dignity of opera. We are here brought face to face with the main distinction between Opera and Singspiel; the latter by no means excludes occasional recitative in place of the spoken dialogue, but the moment the music helps to develope the dramatic denoument we have to do with Opera, and not with Singspiel. It is worth noting that no other nation possesses a form identical with the German Singspiel; the French Vaudeville comes nearest to it, but for this well-known tunes are adapted, instead of the songs being specially composed for the piece as in Germany.
SINK-A-PACE—also written Cinque-pace, Cinqua-pace, Cinque Pass, Cinque Pas, Sinqua-pace, Sinque-pace and Sincopas—a name by which the original Galliard was known. Prætorius (Syntagma Mus. vol. iii. chap. ii. p. 24) says that a Galliard has five steps and is therefore called a Cinque Pas. These five steps, or rather combinations of steps, are well described in Arbeau's 'Orchésographie' (Langres, 1588). In later times the Galliard became so altered by the addition of new steps, that the original form of the dance seems to have been distinguished by the name Cinq Pas. It is frequently mentioned by the Elizabethan writers, well-known examples being the allusions in Shakespeare's 'Much Ado about Nothing' (Act ii. Sc. i), Twelfth Night (Act i. Sc. 3), Marston's 'Satiromastix' (Act i), and Sir John Davies' 'Orchestra' (stanza 67). The following less-known quotation is from the Histriomastix (Part 1) of Prynne (who was especially bitter against this dance): 'Alas there are but few who finde that narrow way … and those few what are they? Not dancers, but mourners: not laughers, but weepers; whose tune is Lachrymæ, whose musicke, sighes for sinne; who know no other Cinqua-pace but this to Heaven, to goe mourning all the day long for their iniquities; to mourne in secret like Doves, to chatter like Cranes for their owne and others sinnes.' The following example of a Cinque-pace is given by Wolfgang Caspar Printz, in his 'Phrynis Mitilenæus, oder Satyrischer Componist' (Dresden, 1696), as a specimen of 'Trichonum Iambicum.' A longer example will be found in Dauney's edition of the 15th-century Skene MS. (Edinburgh, 1838).
SIREN. This, though not strictly a musical instrument, has rendered such good service to acoustical science that it deserves brief notice: for fuller details the works referred to below must be consulted. 'It consists essentially,' says the most recent writer on mathematical acoustics,[1] 'of a stiff disc, capable of revolving about its centre, and pierced with one or more sets of holes arranged at equal intervals round the circumference of circles concentric with the disc. A windpipe in connexion with bellows is presented
- ↑ Lord Rayleigh, Theory of Sound, vol. i. p. 5.
