Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/99

HISTORY.] MUSIC 87 Funda mental discords opposed to con trapun tal style. Italian opera. A. Scar latti. Gluck some hundred and fifty years later, and of which the votaries of Richard Wagner in the present day assume their hero to have been the originator, the principle, namely, that the exigencies of the action and the require ments of the text should rule the musical design in a lyrical drama, and that the instrumental portions of the composition should, quite as much as those assigned to voices, illustrate the progress of the scene and the signifi cance of the words. The last speciality is exemplified in the harmonies and figures of accompaniment, and in the appropriation of particular instruments to the music of particular persons, so as to characterize every member of the action with special individuality. Such must be the true faith of the operatic composer ; it has again and again been opposed by the superstition that feats of vocal agility and other snares for popular applause were lawful elements of dramatic effect ; but it has ever inspired the thoughts of the greatest artists and revealed itself in their work, and no one writer more than another can claim to have devised or to have first acted upon this natural creed. Monteverde had been attacked by Giovanni Battista Artusi for his use of what are now known as fundamental harmonies, which the composer might have learned from the music of Mouton (already named), but which he more probably rediscovered for himself ; he had defended the practice, and his theoretical assailant had retorted. Pol emics ran high as to the relative rights of contrapuntal legislation which had been developed through the course of ages, and the freedom of thought which had as yet neither rule nor tradition ; for every separate use of an unprepared discord was tentative as to effect and specula tive as to reception by its hearers. It will presently be shown that the discovery (no lighter term will suffice) of Mouton and Monteverde has its base in the laws of nature ; here it is enough to say that it was a turning-point in the history of music, the throwing open the resources of the modern as opposed to the limitations of what may justly be called the archaic. The distinction of these two styles was not clearly defined till long afterwards ; but a writer may here be named, Angelo Berardi, whose work (1687) more fully than any other sets forth the con trapuntal code and enunciates the requirements in fugal writing, such as the affinity of subject to answer, and whatever else marks the style and the class of com position. The opera now became a fixed institution in Italy, its performance was no longer restricted to the palaces of princes and nobles, and it became the best-esteemed enter tainment in public theatres. The dramatic oratorio was transferred from the church to the secular stage, becoming in every respect a sacred opera, and only specimens of this class were suffered to be represented during the season of Lent. Conspicuous, as much for the merit as the multitude of his productions, was Alessandro Scarlatti (1659-1725), who gave to the world 115 secular operas, many oratorios, and, besides these, which might well have been a long life s labour, a far greater quantity of ecclesiastical music, some of which is characterized as most dense and massive. He is accredited with three novelties in his dramatic writing : the repetition, Da Capo, of the entire first part of an aria after the second part, of which, how ever, some specimens by earlier writers are said to exist the accompanied recitative, wherein orchestral interludes illustrate the declamation and figurative accompaniment enforces it, as distinguished from speaking recitative, wherein the accompaniment does little more than indicate the harmony whereon the vocal phrases, are constructed ; and the sinfonia or overture which is often associated with his name, as distinguished in plan from that which was first written by Lully, his being sometimes styled the French and Scarlatti s the Italian form of instrumental preface to an extensive work. 1 Alessandro Scarlatti is little less famous as a teacher than as an artist ; he was at the head of all the three conservatories then flourishing in Naples, and the long list of his pupils includes his son Domenico and most of the other chief Italian notabilities of the next generation. Conspicuous among his contem poraries were Cavalli and Cesti. Opera was first introduced in France by Cardinal Maza- French rin, who imported a company of Italian performers for an opera, occasion. The first French opera, Akebar, Roi de Mogul (1646), was composed by the abb6 Mailly for court per formance. So was La Pastorale (1659), by Cambert, who built his work on the Florentine model, and, encouraged by success, wrote several others* on the strength of which he, with his librettist Perrin, instituted the Academic Royale de Musique, and obtained a patent for the same in 1669, exclusively permitting the public performance of opera. Jean Battiste Lully 2 (1633-1687) procured the transfer of this patent in 1672, and by it gained oppor tunity not only for the exercise of his own genius but for the foundation of the French national lyrical drama, which to this day is wrought upon his model. The ballet had been a favourite subject of court diver- Lully. sion since Beaujoyeaulx produced in 1581 Le Ballet Comique de la Royne, a medley of dancing, choral singing, and musical dialogue. Lully, in his course to the summit of royal esteem, had composed several pieces of this order, which were performed chiefly by the courtiers, and in which the king himself often sustained a part ; and, experienced in the taste of the palace, and indeed of the people, our musician incorporated the ballet as an essential in the opera, and so in France it still remains. It was not singly in the structural intermixture of dancing with singing that Lully s operas were, and those of his French successors are, unlike the works of the same order in other countries, he gave such care to and exerted so much skill in the recitative that he made it as interesting as the rhythmical matter, nay, varied it often with metrical vocal phrases and accompanied it constantly with the full band, whereas, until Rossini s Otello in 1818, speaking recitative (recitativo parlante, recitativo secco) was always a main element in the operas of Italy. In Germany the seed of opera fell upon stony ground. German Heinrich Schiitz wrote music to a translation of Peri s P enu Dafne, which was performed for a court wedding at Torgau in 1627 ; but only importations of Italian works with Italian singers came before the public until nearly the end of the century. In England the lyrical drama found an early home. English The masques performed at Whitehall and at the Inns of P era - Court were of the nature of opera, and were largely infused with recitative. Eminent among others in their composition were Nicholas Laniere (c. 1588-1664), born of an Italian father who settled in England in 1571 ; Giovanni Coperario, who during his sojourn in Rome had thus translated his patronymic of John Cooper ; Robert Johnson, who wrote the original music for The Tempest ; Dr Cam- 1 The Italian "sinfonia" mostly begins with an allegro, which is succeeded by a shorter adagio, and ends with a second quick movement that is sometimes the resumption of the first and is sometimes inde pendent of it, and it is exemplified in the overtures to the Seraglio of Mozart, the EuryantJie of Weber, and several of Auber. The French " ouverture " (the original form of the word, which still remains in France) generally begins with a majestic movement, which is followed by an allegro, often of a fugal character, and concludes with a march or gavotte or some other description of dance, and it is exemplified in the overtures of Purcell and nearly all of those of Handel. 2 This is the French form of his names Giovanni Battista Lulli, adopted after he was taken from Florence to Paris as a page.