Part 21
We may regard it as a very striking coincidence, that in the same year which witnessed the production of Peri's "Euridice" at Florence, the first oratorio was performed at Rome, in the church of S. Maria in Valicella, then recently built by St. Philip Neri, the founder of the congregation of the Oratorians. St. Philip, a friend of Palestrina, was a firm believer in the power of sacred music, and its utility as a means of exciting healthy devotional feeling. For the purpose of encouraging a general love for it, he warmly supported the guild or brotherhood called the Laudisti. On certain solemn occasions this order paraded the streets singing hymns of a melodious character, called "laudi spirituali," one of which--"Alia trinità beata"--is still to be heard as a popular hymn-tune. It was probably in the oratory attached to the new church, that the first oratorio was performed, in the month of February, 1600; and it is certain that it was from the name of the edifice that this form of composition derived its name.
The title of the first oratorio was "La Rappresentazione dell' Anima e del Corpo" (The representation of the Soul and the Body). The words were by Laura Guidiccioni and the music by Emilio del Cavalieri. The subject was allegorical, and the style of the music was that of the monodic school, a style wholly declamatory and recognizing no distinction whatever between recitative and air. The inventor and the early masters of the oratorio treated this "sacred drama" more in the manner of the miracle-plays than in that of classical tragedy.
The broad distinction between the mediæval miracle play--which, for a long time, had been popular in Italy, France, Spain, England and Germany--and the oratorio, was that while in the former the dialogue was spoken, in the latter it was recited to musical notes. The oratorio, in fact, as invented by Emilio del Cavalieri was neither more nor less than an opera, based on a sacred subject; and in Italy it never assumed any other form. Other attempts of the same epoch were made by Kapsberger, a German living in Rome: also by Loreto Michelangiolo Capellina, "Il lamento di S. Maria Vergine" (1627); by Stefano Landi, "S. Alessio" (1634); and by Michelangiolo Rossi "Erminio sul Giordano" (1637). The most successful, however, was Domenico Mazzocchi's "Repentimento di S. Maria Maddalena."
Another important composer in this epoch, and connected chiefly with the early evolution of oratorio style, was Ludovico Viadana (Mantua) who wrote concerti da chiesa (church-concertos), pieces for one or more voices with an organ-bass, and thus introduced into chamber music the newly invented monody of Caccini. He is also the first prominent writer who used the basso continuo, so called because it continues with the upper chief melody and gives it a steadfast, harmonic basis. The long-cherished belief that Viadana was the inventor of this device is erroneous.
The early efforts of Monteverde and Cavalli prepared the way for a later generation of composers, whose works are even now regarded as masterpieces of a style of composition none the less beautiful because no longer cultivated. The most prominent composers of the brilliant period which followed the inauguration of the monodic school were Carissimi, Colonna, Alessandro Stradella, Francesco and Luigi de Rossi, and, greatest of all, Alessandro Scarlatti, of whom a special biographical account is included in the present work. Giacomo Carissimi (born in 1604 at Monino, died in 1674 at Rome) devoted himself chiefly to the composition of sacred music. His works are characterized by sweetness and grace, combined with a richness of instrumental accompaniment very much in advance of the age. His chief compositions are the oratorios "Jefte" and "Iona." Giovanni Paolo Colonna (born in 1640 at Brescia, died in 1695 at Bologna) wrote sacred music of a massive, dignified character, and in every way worthy the school to which it belongs. The manuscript of an "offertorium defunctorum," by Colonna, for eight voices, is in the library of the Royal College of Music in London. This master trained a large number of talented pupils (the Bolognese school), among others, Clari, the composer of many fine works and especially of a collection of charming vocal duets and trios; Giovanni Bononcini, a rival of Handel, in London; and Perti, Aldovrandini, Passarini, Pasquale, and the celebrated composer and historian, Padre Martini.
Alessandro Stradella, whose name has been so frequently mentioned in connection with a fatal love-adventure, wrote many operas and oratorios. The aria "Pietà, signore," attributed to him, is not of his composition. For a long time it was thought to have been written by Alessandro Scarlatti; but it is evidently in the style of Francesco di Rossi, a canon of Bari, who died in 1688.
Rossi wrote the operas "Il Sejano," "Clorilda," "Mitrane." The beautiful aria "Ah! rendimi," well known to all singers, is from his opera "Mitrane." Luigi Rossi, of whose presence in Rome we hear as early as the year 1620, was also a very talented composer. His only known opera is "Il palazzo incantato." But none of these composers rivalled, either in talent or reputation, their great contemporary, Alessandro Scarlatti, who was born in 1659 at Trapani in Sicily and died in 1725 at Naples. He was a pupil of Carissimi. The secret of his great power lay in his recognition of the true value of counterpoint. He was wise enough to see that the art for which Peri and Monteverde had expressed their undisguised contempt, formed the technical basis of all true greatness in music. Scarlatti was considered the most learned musician, as well as the greatest genius of the age. His power of production was almost incredible. His first opera, "L'Onesta nell Amore" (1680), was followed by no less than a hundred and fourteen other operas. He is known to have written two hundred masses, and far more than that number of cantatas. Very few of these were printed, and the majority have been consequently lost. Signs of rapid progress are everywhere apparent in these operas,--most of all in the recitative and the form of the aria. Scarlatti is supposed to be the inventor of the recitative obligato (with accompaniment) and the da capo (repetition of a musical movement). His son, Domenico Scarlatti, of whom we shall have later to speak, became one of the greatest harpsicord players on record. Alessandro's greatest contemporaries in Germany were the older members of the Bach family, who steadily made advances in musical art, more especially in the higher branches of sacred music, culminating in the great Sebastian Bach.
[Illustration: BENEDETTO MARCELLO.
Reproduction of a lithograph portrait.]
The followers of Scarlatti during the earlier years of the eighteenth century, claim our admiration, not so much on account of their inventive power, as on the ground that they made progress in matters of technical perfection. Nevertheless, the century gave birth to some composers whose genius was not merely great in comparison with the talent displayed by contemporary writers, but so truly great in itself that it seems impossible they should ever be forgotten.
Among the Italian followers of Scarlatti was the favorite pupil of Legrenzi, Antonio Lotti (1667-1740). He invested the form left by Scarlatti with a melodious grace so modern in character that some of his arias, e. g. "Pur dicesti," are still regarded as standard compositions. He wrote more than twenty operas. In 1756 he was elected maestro di capella at St. Mark's, and in the same year he was commissioned by the Venetian Republic to compose, in honor of the Doge's wedding the Adriatic, the famous "Madrigale per il Bucintoro," entitled "Spirito di Dio."
Antonio Caldara (1678-1736) was also a pupil of Legrenzi, at the time when Lotti studied with him. In 1714 he went to Mantua as maestro di capella, and later in the same capacity to Vienna. He wrote ninety-six operas, of which the most successful was "Temistocle." His finest composition is a Crucifixus for sixteen voices, still very often sung in prominent churches. Among Lotti's pupils was Baldassare Galuppi(1706-1786), who wrote fifty-four operas, and a great deal of delightful chamber-music.
Another pupil of Caldara, and a prominent figure in musical history, was Benedetto Marcello (1686-1739). He was a Venetian nobleman and musical amateur who, though possessing the musical ability of neither Lotti or Caldara, nevertheless succeeded, by hard work, by keen artistic zeal and by literary mastery, in winning fame for himself even outside his native country. His masterpiece, the paraphrases of fifty psalms set to music, at once brought him to the attention of all the prominent musicians of his time, and established his reputation. The library of St. Mark in Venice has a manuscript "Teoria musicale" by him; the court library has many autographs and other works of Marcello, including the cantatas "Addio di Ettone," "Clorie Daliso" and "La Stravaganza." Marcello's satirical pamphlet, "Il teatro alla moda," is a valuable source of information concerning society life in Venice toward the middle of the eighteenth century. Rossini borrowed one of the principal themes of his overture to the "Siege of Corinth" from Marcello's twenty-first psalm.
While the Palestrina epoch was called the "Golden age of ecclesiastical music," the Neapolitan dramatic school, founded by Alessandro Scarlatti, covers a period in the eighteenth century which is called the "Second golden age of Italian music." Almost all of these prominent composers were pupils of Alessandro Scarlatti. Francesco Durante (1684-1755) was a highly accomplished musician, and one of the best writers of the age. His sacred compositions, which are numberless, are as graceful as they are tempered with true dignity of style.
[Illustration: PADRE J. B. MARTINI.
Reproduction of a lithograph portrait.]
Emanuele d' Astorga (1688-1736) was celebrated as a singer and as a composer, and also for his romantic and rather melancholy life. His "Stabat mater," is a composition full of religious fervor and sweet pathos, as well as original in form and melodic invention. Leonardo Leo (1694-1741), who was superior to Astorga, wrote about fifty operas (one for the debut of the soprano Caffarelli), many masses, and a famous Miserere for eight voices. Francesco Feo (1699-1750) was a noble and learned master, who wrote the operas "Ipermestra" and "Andromache."
Lionardo da Vinci (1690-1732), who is sometimes confounded with the great painter of the same name, wrote the operas "Silla" and "Siface." A love quarrel caused his untimely death by assassination.
Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710-1737) was a pupil of Greco, Durante, and Feo. As an opera composer his only success was "La Serva Padrona," an intermezzo which was performed in nearly every theatre in Europe. Among Pergolesi's productions as a church composer, the "Stabat Mater," for two female voices with a string-quartet accompaniment, enjoyed for a while extraordinary popularity.
Nicolo Jomelli's (1714-1774) tender and pathetic style rendered him exceedingly popular, both in Italy and in Germany. He wrote sacred and dramatic music. Mozart said of Jomelli: "He is so brilliant in his own particular way that none of us will be able to put him aside: but he should not have attempted to compose church-music in the old style." Nothwithstanding this judgment by Mozart, it is an undeniable fact that Jomelli was the only composer of his time who treated the ecclesiastical style in an almost perfect manner.
Giovanni Paisiello (1741-1815) showed his true greatness most clearly on the stage, and attained a reputation so enduring that his best opera, "Il barbiere di Siviglia," produced at St. Petersburg in 1777, was only after great opposition displaced to make room for Rossini's masterpiece of the same name.
Nicolo Porpora (1686-1766) was very celebrated as a teacher of singing, but also enjoyed, for some time, great popularity as an opera composer.
One of the most important scientific musicians of the eighteenth century was Padre Martini, who was born at Bologna in 1706. He was first taught music by his father, Antonio Maria. He learned singing and violin playing in his youth, and had lessons in counterpoint from Antonio Riccieri, a castrato of Vincenzo and a composer of merit. In 1725, after having been ordained, he became maestro di capella of the church of San Francesco in Bologna. He thus gradually acquired an extraordinary and comprehensive mass of knowledge, with an amount of literary information far in advance of his musical contemporaries. His library was unusually complete for the time. He possessed, for instance, ten copies of Guido of Arezzo's very rare Micrologos. Scientific men of all countries took pleasure in sending him books.
It was chiefly in the development of means and details of expression that music was advancing during this period. The art of singing, too, was receiving much attention. The head of the Neapolitan school, Aless. Scarlatti, in addition to his mastery of counterpoint and fugue, was also a great vocal artist, and all his successors tried to cultivate the art of _bel canto_. This art of purified and unsophisticated singing was the foundation-stone in the career of all dramatic composers, and hence their great ability to write in a wholly singable style.
[Illustration: GIOVANNI PAISIELLO.
From an engraving in Clément's "Musiciens Célèbres."]
The climax of _bel canto_ was reached when the celebrated vocal artist, Pistocchi, founded at Bologna his training school for vocalists. Many of his earlier pupils were the celebrities and stars of the London Italian opera, during the brilliant epoch in which Handel wrote for that stage. Among them were the male soprano Senesino, and Sgra. Cuzzoni and Faustina Hasse, wife of the opera composer. But the medal had also its reverse. Haughtiness and boundless conceit were prominent characteristics of these artists. Everybody knows how Handel, not always sweet of temper, treated Cuzzoni, who whimsically refused to take a part in a new opera unless the composer would rewrite it for her. As if endowed with superhuman strength, he seized her, held her out of a window, and threatened to drop her if she did not consent to sing the part as written. But those who had not at their command such violent means to subdue singers, had repeatedly to suffer from their tyrannies.
Indeed, as vocal art came to be more and more the central point of interest in the opera, consideration for the composer grew less and less; and, finally, he became simply the slave of the almost musically-ignorant vocalists. He was obliged to modify his compositions to their satisfaction, whether the changes were in accord with good taste or not. In the operas of the eighteenth century the musical work was esteemed valuable only in proportion as it offered opportunities for vocal display. The composer, in many cases, gave no more than a skeleton of the aria, and the singers were left free to add any embellishments that would display their vocal abilities to the best advantage. Nevertheless names like those of Cuzzoni, Faustina, Durastanti, Frasi, Strada, La Francesina, Nicolini, Senesino, Bernacchi and Carestini lent brilliancy to the epoch. They were all favorite singers in Handel's day. They were great singers when he engaged them, and he no doubt made them greater. In like manner, Porpora, notwithstanding the weakness of his operas, created the school which produced Caffarelli and Farinelli. The Italians may, with just pride, dwell on the fact that the great majority of the prominent singers of the nineteenth century were pupils of Italian maste