CHAPTER VIII

THE ORCHESTRA

_The Orchestra as an instrument; instruments of the Sixteenth Century,—Chitaroni, theorbo, lutes; Claudio Monteverde (1567-1643); Marc Antonio Ingegneri; Orchestra of Orfeo; Chitaroni; Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda; Incoronazione di Poppea; Adrianna; Vergilio Mazzocchi (1593-1646), and his music school; Stefano Landi; Orchestras in Rome; Orchestras in Venice; Antonio Cesti and his opera, “Il Pomo d’ Oro”; Cardinal Mazarin; growing popularity of the violin; the first French Orchestra—the Twenty-four Violins of the King; Bocan’s playing; anecdote of Cardinal Richelieu; Louis XIV and his magnificence; Twenty-four Violins of the King; amateur orchestras; instrumental musicians; Jean Baptiste Lully (1632-1687); La Grande Mademoiselle; the “Petits Violons”; Lully and Molière; death of Lully; Lully, the first real conductor; Lully’s Orchestra; Descoteaux, the famous flute-player and tulip-fancier; Philbert; quotation from La Bruyère; La Bas, the bassoon-player; Verdier; Jean Baptiste Marchand, the lute-player; Teobaldo di Gatti, the basse de viole; Jean François Lalouette; Pascal Collasse; Marin Marais; La Londe, the violinist; pay-roll of Lully’s men; Orchestra of Charles II of England; Thomas Baltzar of Lübeck; music in England in the Seventeenth Century; quotation from Anthony Wood; quotation from Dr. Burney; Corelli; Amati and Stradivari; development of the violin; Giovanni Baptista Bassani; Corelli’s great vogue; Geminiani’s estimate of Corelli; Corelli’s Orchestra and conducting; Corelli’s compositions and their influence on violin-playing; Alessandro Scarlatti, “the Father of Classical Music”; Francischello’s violoncello-playing; importance of strings in Scarlatti’s compositions; Domenico Scarlatti, originator of the Sonata form; Rameau and what he did to develop the Orchestra; the North-German Chorale; Johann Sebastian Bach, the “Musicians’ Musician”; Bach’s contribution to the Orchestra; Handel and his treatment of instruments; Handel’s Orchestra; Handel’s conducting; Handel’s use of the horn, violoncello, bassoon and kettledrums; neutral tints of the Orchestra of Bach and Handel; Handel’s great use of crescendo and diminuendo; Gluck’s devotion to Handel; Gluckists and Piccinists; Gluck’s contribution to the Orchestra; Gluck’s dramatic sense; Gluck’s ballet-music; Haydn; Prince Esterhazy; the second and “magnificent Prince Esterhazy”; “Papa Haydn,” the “Father of the Orchestra”; Haydn’s Orchestra; Haydn’s knowledge of the kettledrums; quotation from Stendhal; how Haydn composed; Dr. Burney’s estimation of Haydn and his new style of music; a modern critic on Haydn’s style; Mozart, the supreme genius; Stendhal on Mozart; Mozart’s gift to the Orchestra,—tone-color; influence of Mozart and Haydn upon each other; the Mannheim Orchestra; Mozart’s love of the clarinet; Mozart’s conducting; Mozart’s first composition; Beethoven s admiration for Mozart; an early appreciation of Beethoven (1818); Beethoven’s unhappy life; Orchestra of the Elector of Cologne in 1791 in which Beethoven played; Beethoven’s improvization; Beethoven in Vienna; the Lichnowskys; a Beethoven concert in 1795; Beethoven at the piano; appearance of Beethoven; Mozart’s and Beethoven’s Orchestra; Beethoven’s Symphonies; Beethoven’s treatment of instruments; Beethoven’s enrichment of the Orchestra; Beethoven, the last great classic and prophet of the New Era; Classic and Romantic contrasted; the Romantic School; Carl Maria von Weber; Weber as conductor of the Dresden Orchestra; Weber’s development of the woodwind; Weber’s fondness for the clarinet and horn; Weber, a painter of Nature; Schubert’s gifts to the Orchestra; Schubert’s Symphonies; Mendelssohn’s grace, charm and brightness of spirit; Mendelssohn’s happy life and varied accomplishments; Mendelssohn’s orchestration; Mendelssohn’s conducting; “Music of the Future” and its three great exponents,—Berlioz, Liszt and Wagner; Romantic Movement of 1830; Berlioz, a follower of Beethoven, Weber and Gluck; Berlioz’s love for the colossal; Heine on Berlioz; Berlioz’s volcanic temperament; Berlioz, the “Father of Modern Orchestration,” Berlioz, a forerunner of Wagner; Wagner’s confessed indebtedness to Berlioz; monster concerts; Berlioz’s symphonies; Paganini’s gift to Berlioz; Franz Liszt, a favorite of fortune; Liszt’s education; Liszt in Paris; the Romantic Movement; Liszt impressed by Paganini; phenomenal concert-tours; Liszt’s generosity; Liszt in Weimar; Liszt becomes an Abbé; Finck on Liszt’s genius; Liszt, a follower of Berlioz; the Symphonic Poem; Liszt’s orchestration; Franz Liszt, a wonderful spirit; Richard Wagner; Liszt’s aid to Wagner; Wagner’s dream fulfilled; Wagner’s introduction of the Symphonic Orchestra into the opera; Wagner’s treatment of instruments; Wagner’s orchestration and Wagner’s Orchestra; Wagner’s novel effects; Richard Strauss; Strauss’s life and education; novel use of instruments; complex and gigantic effects; Tschaikowsky; his education and career; Orchestra and scoring of Tschaikowsky; the “Casse Noisette Suite” (Nut-cracker Suite); Tschaikowsky’s love for Mozart; French composers and symphonic music; Saint-Saëns; French composers return to national fountains of inspiration; modern French composers; Debussy and his music; Debussy’s orchestral effects; Debussy’s Orchestra,—a melodious atmosphere and musical web; Debussy’s opalescent effects; Debussy’s love of water—sea, fountains and silvery rain; L’Après Midi d’un faune; Debussy’s Nocturnes; Catholic tastes of American audiences; Symphony Orchestra and Orchestra of the Eleventh Century compared._

Now that we have become acquainted with all the instruments in the Orchestra, we must turn our attention to the Orchestra itself.

We must consider the Orchestra as _one great instrument on which the conductor plays_.

The Orchestra is made up of all these varied instruments, which, as we have seen, have been brought to perfection during centuries of use and experiment,—instruments of long ancestry and historical interest, instruments that have figured in song and story and romance.

The Orchestra is, therefore, a very unique instrument itself.

It holds within itself nearly every kind of tone from the deepest rumble of the bass tuba and growl of the double-bass to the cool, flowing notes of the clarinet and bassoon and to the penetrating call of the flute, the cry of the violin and scream of the piccolo. It holds within itself every kind of vibration from bowed, or plucked, strings, and air blown upon quivering reeds, or through pipes, or tubes, or horns; it has every kind of thump on tightly-stretched skin; it has every kind of rattle, clang and clash; and every kind of sharp blow, from the heavy stroke on the steel rod to the silvery notes of bells, or the brilliant, fiery sparks from the triangle.

But there is one thing more that we have not yet taken into consideration,—and that is the _human_ element.

What would these instruments be if there were no musicians to play them?

Is there anything more melancholy than a case full of musical instruments hanging lifeless and silent in a museum?

We recall the striking illustration Shakespeare makes of unused instruments in his _Richard the Second_, where the Duke of Norfolk, being banished, breaks forth with:

“_A heavy sentence, my most sovereign liege,_ _And all unlook’d for from your highness’ mouth._ _The language I have learn’d these forty years,_ _My native English, now I must forego:_ _And now my tongue’s use is to me no more_ _Than an unstringed viol, or a harp;_ _Or like a cunning instrument cased up,_ _Or, being open, put into his hands_ _That knows no touch to tune the harmony._”

In addition to the rich and varied instrumental material, we have _ninety_ personalities possessed of brains, emotions and artistic ideals and aspirations.

We call the Orchestra an instrument, or even a machine; but let us think for a moment of these intelligent personalities behind their instruments, or merged into their instruments, and we shall realize what a _sensitive_ organization a Symphony Orchestra is.

The Orchestra is a corporate body that is ruled by the Conductor. His is the power that holds all these forces together; he it is who guides these ninety men through the mazes of the vast musical composition, or fabric of woven melodies and harmonies, the patterns and colors of which he will place before our auditory nerves, which will carry to and impress upon our brains the musical forms and figures that also charm our senses; and to do this the Conductor must understand the technique of his Orchestra every bit as thoroughly as each man knows the technique of his instrument.

The Orchestra began to be an instrument just about the time that Gasparo di Salò (see page 21) fixed the form of the violin.

Let us look for a moment at the instruments that were in use at the beginning of the Sixteenth Century—the instruments that formed an Orchestra in Shakespeare’s time—the Orchestra of the Renaissance. Whether in Italy, France, or England, it was the same.

“We are in a small square chamber, panelled and floored with oak. It has a table with two silver candle-sticks, a couple of chairs and a few dozen books arranged on a sort of dresser. In the window is a settle, and on it a jumbled heap of music. We turn it over and see that it is almost all manuscript—single-line parts of madrigals, ballets and canzonets. But there are one or two printed books, such as Mr. Anthony Munday’s _Banquet of Dainty Conceits_, published in 1588, and some later things, such as Mr. Peter Philips’s Madrigals that came out four years ago. Here is even a proof-copy of Mr. Morley’s new five-part _Ballets_. Clearly the owner of this room is an advanced thinker. That locked case opposite, of stamped Spanish leather, evidently contains his favorite _gamba_.[29]

“However, we must not loiter any longer in this room. We had better make our way into the corridor, go down the staircase, and walk through the great gallery that runs the whole length of the building. We are now in the East Wing, where apparently the musicians have their quarters. In the main room the logs are blazing; and on the table are scraps of lute-tablature altered and re-altered, with odds and ends of minnikins—the thin top-strings of the lute. There has evidently been a rehearsal here.

[Illustration: THEORBO MADE IN PADUA IN 1629]

“Near the fireplace are the lutenists’ boxes. We notice on them French and Italian, as well as English, names. If we open any of the boxes we shall find inside them some very lovely instruments. Their vaulted bodies are built up of strips of pine and cedar, and there are exquisite purflings and ornaments of ebony, ivory and silver. In front is at least one beautifully carved and inlaid ‘rose’; while the necks are all ‘fretted,’ semitone by semitone. Each lute has twelve strings of catgut tuned in six unison-pairs. But if we touch two or three lutes in succession, we shall see that all players do not adopt the same tuning. The average lutenist seems to prefer for his six pairs of strings a system of fourths joined by a third in the middle.

“The instruments are made in three chief sizes, but the _tenor-lute_, or _theorbo_, from Padua,[30] appears to be a favorite. If we take up one of these lutes and pass our hands across its strings, we shall become aware of a deliciously tender harmony. The instrument has no strength—only a sort of _melancholy quietude_. And this is due, in some measure, to the length of the strings. For much tension is out of the question in an instrument whose bridge is merely glued to the belly.

“Here is a tall lute case in the corner, reaching almost to the ceiling. From its appearance it has travelled far, over rough roads. Its owner’s name suggests Italy. Let us take it out very gingerly. It is the latest thing in lutes—a big Roman _Chitarone_,[31] or archlute, or bass-lute, with seventeen strings—practically two instruments in one. For besides the usual _pairs-of-strings_ that run up to the lower ‘nut,’ there is a second series of _single-strings_ stretched to a second nut at the lute head. These are the newly invented _diapasons_, a set of bass-strings which hang free of the fingerboard and can therefore only be plucked to give the one note of their full vibrating length. This addition is naturally a great advantage in _consort_, or ensemble, playing; for it extends the compass diatonically downwards.

“Before we leave the rehearsal room for Lord Strange’s performance in the Hall we shall make free to open the huge oak cupboard that runs across the upper part of the room. This is a boarded chest, as they call it; and we know very well that we shall find inside a set of six viols. They are heavy and cumbersome instruments and they run downwards like a Noah’s Ark procession from No. 1, the big Double-Bass, to No. 6, the High Treble. The favorite is No. 2, the Bass Viol, or _Gamba_. That is _viola da gamba_ (leg-viol). The Italians also used the names _da spalla_ (the shoulder) and _da braccio_ (arm) for the next two smaller viols. It is doubtless a choice specimen of this instrument which was under lock and key in the other room. It may have been made by Gasparo di Salò.[32] For the Italians are rapidly coming to the fore as viol-makers; and a new man, Andreas Amati,[33] is manufacturing a very small instrument, which he calls a _violino_, or _violin_. But the Queen’s violists probably regard this as a rather cheap and not quite worthy attempt.

“The tone of the viols is sombre and somewhat nasal. It lacks brightness altogether. Excellent for _arpeggios_ and quiet vocal passages, the instruments are apt to sulk unless continually coaxed by the bow. And the bow unfortunately has to be used with considerable caution. For the true viols have no fewer than six strings apiece. And in their tuning they follow the irregularities of the lutes by using a series of fourths joined together by a third. But the makers are beginning to see the necessity of reducing the number throughout the whole Viol Family; for the difficulties of bowing are very great. Accordingly they are just introducing a modified type of instrument with five strings. They call these _quintons_; and those players who use them are adopting a tuning which gives them perfect fifths, at any rate, in the lower part of their compass. This is interesting. For it shows that some change is in the air. We should like to have ten minutes’ private conversation on the subject with Signor Amati. If we did, he would first warn us that what he was about to say must not on any account be repeated to his best customers, the violists. Then he would probably give it as his opinion that his new _violino_ with its simple regular tuning in fifths and its lovely caressing tone-quality is worth all the viols that have ever been made; and that all the talk about ‘vulgarizing’ and ‘popularizing’ is nothing more than professional stupidity.”[34]

Orchestral music begins in Italy. It also begins with the dawn of the Opera. We must first remember that the Italians always cared more for solo-singing than for chorus-singing. It was just the same with their instrumental music. Instruments playing _solo_, or holding a dialogue together, with brilliant improvisations, occupied a much higher place in the Italian taste than harmonies produced by a number of instruments playing together. In other words, the Italians preferred _monodic_ music to _polyphonic_ music. So we find in the first operas, or plays interspersed with music, that the only instruments that were welcomed were the clavecin, the organ, the _chitarone_, and the lyre.

Now that combination is not as thin, nor as simple, as we might think. The clavecin and organ could supply both bass and treble. The _chitarone_, as we have just seen on page 137, was a big bass-lute known also as the archlute, with two sets of strings: one reaching all the way down the enormously long neck; the other, and shorter, reaching only about a third the way down. Each set of strings had separate pegs.

The lyre was very complicated. It was a kind of viol with twelve, or fourteen, strings, tuned either in fourths or fifths, alternately ascending and descending. This very singular way of tuning permitted the performer to find all kinds of chords in all kinds of positions beneath his fingers.

[Illustration: THREE CHITARONI

_Seventeenth Century_]

The composer carried his melodies, however, on a very simple bass. If the opera had “symphonies,” that is to say instrumental interludes, and ballet-music, the composer would often indicate in his score “at this place the instruments can play”; and the musicians selected what they pleased. As time wore on, if the composer indicated a place for one or two violins to play, he would give them a little theme; and the players worked it up and elaborated it to suit their fancy and according to their skill. Very often, indeed, they added a brilliant musical _divertissement_. The scores of the earliest Italian operas have very little accompaniment save two or three violins above a bass played on the theorbo, or clavecin.

At the beginning of the Seventeenth Century a change took place in music. A great many of the old kinds of wind instruments and the grave old viols began to disappear. They were too old-fashioned for the New Art of the time. The famous opera of _Orfeo_ by Monteverde (1607) is, perhaps, the last of the great operas of that period that contained all that was considered in those days the _rich voices of the Orchestra_. _Orfeo_ is a landmark in musical history for many reasons. We shall presently see that it is also the _starting-point of our modern Orchestra_.

And who was this Monteverde to whom we look back through three hundred years of musical history? One of the most interesting facts about him is that he was born in Cremona, that famous “violin town,”[35] where music was literally in the air, although the Amatis and Stradivaris were not yet working.

Claudio Monteverde was born in 1567. He was a contemporary of Gasparo di Salò and Maggini.[36] At an early age he was an expert violist and was taken into the service of the Duke of Mantua. The Duke’s Court was the centre of every luxury and elegance in Lombardy and music had long been one of the arts beloved there.[37] The Mantuan collection of instruments was famous; and the Duke, like all other noble princes of the time, had his own band of private musicians. At their head for his _Maestro di Capella_, he had a very learned musician named Marc Antonio Ingegneri; and young Monteverde was put under him at once to finish and perfect his musical education.

Ingegneri, however, was unusually fond of counterpoint and of writing fugues and Monteverde cared very little about _polyphonic_ music. And we can imagine, therefore, that when at the age of sixteen he burst forth with a beautiful _Book of Madrigals_—madrigals were all the rage in those days—his artistic nature sought relief from studies that he thought horribly dry and tiresome, but which undoubtedly did him a lot of good. This set of madrigals was so well received that he followed it with four more books of this lovely, lyrical form. Then in 1603 Ingegneri died and Monteverde was chosen to succeed him. He had been superintending the music at the Court of Mantua for four years and providing brilliant entertainments and concerts of all kinds when the Duke’s son, Francesco di Gonzaga, married Margharita, Infanta of Savoy. It was a brilliant alliance; and the Duke of Mantua, wishing to celebrate it in royal style, charged Monteverde to write the most splendid opera possible and to stage it in the most magnificent manner. So Monteverde composed _Orfeo_. This was one of the most popular of all subjects. It seems as if every Italian composer had to write the search of Orpheus for his beloved Eurydice. Ever since Dante had drawn his fantastic scenes of the _Inferno_, Italian audiences had thrilled to stage pictures of the lower regions for three hundred years! But it was strange that Monteverde should have picked out this subject; for while he was writing his opera his own lovely wife died and he was in bitter grief for her. So, perhaps, one reason that Monteverde’s _Orfeo_ is so vital a work lies in the fact that the composer was singing of his own despair.

We often see in histories of music that Monteverde astonished the musical world with a novel Orchestra in _Orfeo_ and that he introduced a great many new instruments into his score.

Nothing of the kind! What Monteverde called for in his Orchestra of _Orfeo_ was _exactly what the Court of Mantua had been accustomed to see and to hear. There was not a single new instrument of any kind whatsoever!_

Now this is what he had: an Orchestra of forty instruments. As instruments of the piano class he had two _clavicembali_, two _organi di legno_ (little organs with flute tones) and a _regale_ (little organ). As instruments of sustaining bass—_bass continuo_—he had two double-bass viols, three _violas da gamba_ and two _chitaroni_ (deep lutes). As instruments for string ensemble he had two little violins _à la française_, or _pochettes_, ten _violas da braccio_ (soprano, alto, tenor and bass), and ordinary violins (such as Gasparo di Salò and Maggini were making). As wind instruments he had a _clarino_ (shrill trumpet) (see page 110); three _trompettes_ with _sordini_; four trumpets and two _cornets à bouquin_; flutes, both shrill and deep; and two oboes. He also had an _arpa doppia_ (double harp).

First of all, as was usual in those days, the trumpets gave a fanfare, or “flourish,” to announce the beginning of the drama. Then came the introduction. Though called a “Toccata,” it was very nearly a _real overture_. It had to be repeated three times before the rising of the curtain. The organ, clavecin and _chitaroni_ seem always to have accompanied the singers; the _ritournellas_, which marked the entrance of the singers, were usually played by two solo instruments—the little tiny “French violins,” or the little flutes, on a continued bass from some of the bass instruments; and in the “symphonies” two groups of instruments were used—first, a group of violins in five parts, _viole di brazzo_ (ten in number) supported by the bass of double-bass viols, clavecins, or _chitaroni_. Then a group of seven instruments (five trombones and two cornets). The “symphonies” were very short—just an air played through once; but they are very sweetly harmonized and resemble dance-tunes.

The groups of instruments were intended to express, accompany and even symbolize each personage in the drama. _Orfeo_ was, therefore, not an innovation; it was the highest expression of the _end of a period—the crowning-point of the music of the Italian Renaissance_.

There were several new ideas in _Orfeo_, however, even if the instruments of the Orchestra were just those of the Italian Renaissance. In one place, for instance, two violins were allowed to play independently of the viols; and _that_ was absolutely novel. The fact is _Monteverde was new_, if his Orchestra was not; and his originality was going to express itself more fully in after years as we shall presently see.

[Illustration: CLAUDIO MONTEVERDE]

Let us run through the arrangement of Act III. The curtain rises on the Infernal Regions with scenery painted in the magnificent style of the Italian painters of the period—Titian, Tintoret, Correggio—any of the great masters we may like to think of—and with many ingenious mechanical devices; for these brilliant Italians were very well accustomed to getting up pageants and _festas_. The trombone, cornet and organ play large and sombre chords to evoke the idea of Hades. Orpheus enters and tries to conquer the Powers of Darkness with all the resources of his art. The first couplet of his song is accompanied by the _organo di legno_ (organ with the flute tones) and the _chitaroni_; and when Orpheus begins to sing, the two violins play. At the second couplet, after a _ritournella_ by the violins, two cornets take their places and play; and at the third couplet, when Orpheus sings “Where Eurydice is, is paradise for me,” the double harp plays graceful arpeggios. Then Orpheus sings some very elaborate vocalizations accompanied by two violins and a _basso da braccio_ (a deep violin). When Orpheus bids Charon, the ferryman, let him pass over the river Styx, the string-quartet plays chords; and, finally, when Orpheus is triumphant, the whole Orchestra bursts forth in one grand _finale_.

_Orfeo_ was a truly wonderful work. It was startling in many ways; but its _Orchestra was conservative_. The instruments played together in families. There was no attempt to mingle all their voices together, nor to combine instruments except at the very end when the curtain was falling.

It is not _Orfeo_, therefore, that marks the beginning of our modern Orchestra, but an opera that Monteverde brought out twenty years later called _Il Combattimento di Tancrede e Clorinda_.

In the _Combat of Tancred and Clorinda_, to give the opera its English name, Monteverde used a very different Orchestra from the one he had used in _Orfeo_. Here he has two violins, two viols (tenor and bass) and the _contrabasso da gamba_. At this very moment—the year 1627—_the violin took root in the Orchestra_. In ten years’ time it became the leading instrument.[38] By 1639 _there were no more players on the viol in Italy_ that amounted to anything. From 1634 the violoncello was also established as an orchestral instrument.

Truly, a great change had taken place! Monteverde’s Orchestra—we can now call it so—had become one in which the violins and the instruments of the piano class—the clavecin, etc.—form the _new body of the Orchestra_.

When Monteverde wanted certain effects, he now used special _timbres_, or kinds of voices: trumpets and drums for triumphal scenes; cornets and trombones for fantastic scenes; and flutes for pastoral scenes. Such was the Orchestra that Monteverde used in his celebrated opera, the _Incoronazione di Poppea_, which he brought out in 1642, at the end of his life, and which the _Orchestras of Venice followed for years_.

Another thing that Monteverde did that was new in the _Coronation of Poppea_ was to make his violins describe the excitement of the combat by a long _tremolo_, using the passage exactly as we do to-day. It was so novel that the violinists refused to play it. But they had to!

Monteverde also did not hesitate to introduce an instrumental _intermezzo_ in the midst of a tragic scene.

Monteverde was a painter of life. His music was vital and vivid and in spirit much like that of the great Italian portrait-painters who were his contemporaries. He saw his characters and he explained them in musical language; and _he made his Orchestra help him to do so_. And he did this, moreover, in such an artistic way that Wagner thought him worthy of copying nearly three hundred years later.

Monteverde stands forever as one of the greatest figures in musical history.

After the representation of _Orfeo_, Monteverde continued to compose; and in 1608 he brought out an opera called _Adrianna_, which aroused the whole of Italy to enthusiasm. Then he produced a number of ballets and comedies. In 1612 he went to Venice, for he had been appointed _maestro di capella_ in the beautiful church of St. Mark’s. The people went wild over him. He was honored in every way; and his music travelled into Germany, Holland, France, and England and was studied by all the leading musicians.

After the terrible epidemic of the Plague in 1630, which carried off fifty thousand persons in sixteen months in Italy alone, Monteverde entered the Church; but this did not prevent him from composing dramatic works and madrigals (which he still loved to write) on love and war. He saw the first public opera-house opened in Venice in 1637, which was an important musical event, and he died in 1643, at the age of seventy-six.

After _Orfeo_, Monteverde gave up his “noisy Orchestra,” as it was considered. He now simplified it. He weeded out the old instruments whose tones did not harmonize with the new instruments—for the Brescian and Cremonese-makers were very busy in these days turning out new models; and, as he lived in the region of the great violin-makers, Monteverde saw every new model as it left the hands of Maggini or Amati.[39] The idea had dawned upon him of _mixing his instruments_—our modern Orchestra was beginning!

We must not imagine, however, that Monteverde was the only great musician of the day, though he was _the most popular composer in Europe_.

[Illustration: CAR OF MUSICIANS. TRIUMPH OF MAXIMILIAN

_By Albrecht Dürer, about 1518_]

Florence, Venice and Rome, to say nothing of all the smaller cities, had their operas, ballets and musical-contests. Rome was very active. And, moreover, there was a great musical educator in Rome, whose name was Vergilio Mazzocchi (1593-1646), who was one of Monteverde’s contemporaries. He was _maestro di capella_ in St. John Lateran’s and in St. Peter’s. It will give us an idea of how seriously music was studied in those days if we remember what Mazzocchi required and what extraordinarily proficient pupils he sent out from his school. They could sing, play instruments, compose and write musical dramas and ballets; they could read music at sight and copy it; and they were also well trained in literature. Few of us would care for a day like this:—

In the morning—“an hour to singing difficult exercises; an hour to the study of literature; an hour to practise singing before a mirror so as not to make disgraceful faces. In the evening—half an hour to theory; half an hour to the study of counterpoint; an hour to composition; and an hour to literature.” The rest of the day was devoted to practice on the clavecin, to composing for pleasure, and taking a walk in the open air. Pupils were also sent to the theatre and concerts, so that they could hear and study celebrated singers and performers; and they had to write an account of their impressions! Poor young things! A busy schedule for work and _pleasure_!

About this time an opera by Stefano Landi was produced in Rome (1632). It was called _S. Alessio_; and the libretto was written by Giulio Rospigliosi, from the _Golden Legend_. This work is very important in musical history, not only because it has a double chorus and a double Orchestra, but because the second act opens with a real overture in three movements. It begins with a rapid _Fugato_ in 4-time; then comes a majestic _Adagio_ in 3-time; and then another rapid _Fugato_ in 4-time. The “_sinfonia_,” or “symphony,” introducing Act I, is in five movements,—a theme treated in fugue and counterpoint; a little piece described as an “echo”; a short, slow number in 3-time; and a rapid _Fugato_. The orchestral score is written in _five_ instrumental parts: (1)-(3) violins; (4) harps, lutes, theorbos, violoncello and bass viol; and (5), _clavicembali_.

Music in Rome was kept almost exclusively for the wealthy and aristocratic circles. At the Barberini Theatre, which could easily seat 3,500 persons, only guests were admitted who had invitations. The public was not allowed to see one of these fine operas! Woe betide anyone who tried to get admittance! On one occasion in 1639 the Cardinal Antonio Barberini chased out of the opera-house with his stick a nice-looking and well-dressed young man, because he had not sufficient rank to come there!

In Venice matters were different. The public was not only allowed to attend, but the director of the opera-house would even permit gondoliers to sit in the boxes when the owners were absent. Consequently, the Venetians were very well educated in artistic music. Many beautiful works were given there. And the Venetian Orchestras were of the very best.

Mr. Goldschmidt, who examined the scores of 112 of these old operas in the Library of St. Mark’s, found that the main support of the Orchestra was the clavecin, which usually accompanied the singers; that the violins were in general charge of the _ritournelles_ and the _entr’actes_; that the trumpets played in the overtures and marches and often with the voices; that the cornets, trombones and bassoons were used for fantastic effects; that horns, drums, and other instruments of percussion were used; and that flutes were not as popular as they were in France.

[Illustration: CAR OF MUSICIANS. TRIUMPH OF MAXIMILIAN

_By Albrecht Dürer, about 1518_]

Can we not see in these old Venetian Orchestras of three hundred years ago some ideas gradually approaching towards our own?

Let us turn to Vienna, which was the great centre of the Central Empire. One work will suffice to show that there was splendid music in that brilliant capital. In 1666 Antonio Cesti, one of the members of the Papal Choir in Rome and then _maestro di capella_ for the Emperor Ferdinand III, in Vienna, wrote for the Emperor’s wedding festivities an opera called _Il Pomo d’oro_. It was described as a “dramatic festa.” The theatre seated 5000 persons. The Orchestra was separated from the last row of chairs by a wide space and the conductor, who was the composer of the work, sat at the _cembalo_, with his thirty musicians around him. His Orchestra consisted of six violins; twelve alto violas; tenor; bass; contrabass; two flutes; trumpets; two cornets; three trombones; a bassoon; and a little organ.

The strings seem to have played most of the accompaniments to the voices; the flutes were used for the pastoral scenes; the trumpets for the great choral scenes; and the cornets and trombones for the infernal regions,—of course, they had to have infernal regions!

An overture preceded each act. The opera was a magnificent spectacle. By turns heaven and hell were represented; there were tempests on the sea; there were battles on the land; towns were besieged with armed elephants; and there were gardens and lovely landscapes and superb costumes. And the Orchestra had to be worthy to accompany all this stupendous stage-setting.

An idea of the Orchestras of the Renaissance may be had by looking at the three pictures facing pages 148, 150 and 152, representing the _Triumph of Maximilian_ by Albrecht Dürer.

The Emperor Maximilian, who stood at the head of the old Roman Empire and the German nation, took a childish delight in the glorification of his own person. Instead of having a Triumphal Arch in marble erected, he engaged Dürer in 1512 to make a record of his fame in engravings. There was to be a Triumphal Arch and a Triumphal Procession followed by a Triumphal Car in which the Emperor and his whole family were to appear. Maximilian died in 1518. Dürer, to honor his memory, brought out the _Triumphal Procession_ in eight large plates, three of which are represented in this book. They show exactly the kinds of instruments that were used in the Orchestras in Rome, Florence, Venice and Vienna, of which we have been talking; but they give the Spirit of the Renaissance as interpreted by the German mind.

Cardinal Mazarin, who brought so many Italian tastes into France when he became Prime Minister to the Queen Mother, Anne of Austria, also introduced the Italian Opera. In 1643 he sent to Rome for musicians.

It is very interesting to note the growing taste in France for “Strings.” Like Italy, France had lost all pleasure in the big, bass woodwind instruments; and as for brass instruments, they were not tolerated. All had gone. Germany and Spain kept wind instruments in their Orchestras; but in France and Italy the bowed strings were growing in favor every day. Sometimes in church the cornet was played to mingle with the voices, but nowhere else.

[Illustration: CAR OF MUSICIANS. TRIUMPH OF MAXIMILIAN

_By Albrecht Dürer, about 1518_]

The only instruments that French ears cared to listen to were Strings (including the whole Violin Family), oboes and flutes. France always loved the flute, which was comparatively little cared for in Italy, where it was chiefly used in operas, as we have observed, for pastoral scenes.

The violin was becoming more and more popular every day. In every kind of music it took the lead. It had been so much used for dance-music that it had developed into a supple and graceful instrument and one that gave itself most willingly to many delicate shades of expression in the hands of a good player. The violin was often combined with the clavecin and theorbo.

The combination was delicate and charming, rich and beautiful.

The old author of the _Comparison of Italian with French Music_ says: “I beg to remark that with its four or five strings, the violin makes you feel certain passions in the most striking manner, for it expresses them in a way peculiar to itself. It really does not matter if it has four strings, or five strings. The Italians tune their five strings in fourths, we tune our four strings in fifths; and it comes to the same thing. The violin mounted in either way is always the perfection of music.”[40]

About this time the first _real_ French Orchestra came into existence. We may almost consider it as an ancestor of our own, as we shall presently see. This was the famous “Twenty-Four Violins of the King.” Although it originated in the days of Louis XIII, it is more identified with the reign of his successor, Louis XIV.

The “Twenty-Four Violins” were the best performers of the period and they are constantly spoken of in the _Memoirs_ and _Journals_ of the day. One of them, for instance, Jacques Cordier, called Bocan, was dancing-master at the Court of France, as well as violinist, and followed Henrietta Maria, the King’s daughter, to England when she married Charles I. When the Revolution broke out and Charles was beheaded, Bocan returned to France and to the King’s household. He was one of the best violinists of his day.

“The sound of his violin is ravishing,” writes Mersenne (who wrote a book about the instruments of his time); “he plays perfectly, just as sweetly as he wishes; and he makes use of a kind of trembling sound, which charms our spirits.”

This was evidently the _vibrato_, which is produced by oscillating the finger rapidly upon a note without allowing it to leave the string; and it does produce “a kind of trembling sound.” The old writer described it exactly.

Bocan played on that memorable evening when the Cardinal de Richelieu danced a Sarabande for the Queen Mother, Anne of Austria. At this moment the great Prime Minister of France was taking part in all the momentous affairs of Europe; and we get a glimpse of him in a play hour that few of his contemporaries had. The Comte de Brienne wrote of it in his Memoirs:

“Richelieu,” he says, “was dressed in trousers of green velvet. On his garters were silver bells and he had castanets in his hands. He danced a Sarabande, which Bocan played. The violinist and a few spectators were hidden behind a screen where we could see the antics of the dancer. We nearly split our sides laughing; and I declare that now, even after fifty years, I nearly die laughing when I think of it.”

When Louis XIV ascended the throne the “Twenty-Four Violins” became the finest and most celebrated Orchestra in Europe. Though founded, as we have said, in the former reign, the “Twenty-Four Violins” is particularly the _Orchestra of Louis XIV_, the magnificent “Sun-King.” In the superb palaces of Versailles and Marly Louis XIV blazed with all the glory that is possible to mortals. Magnificent furniture, magnificent paintings, magnificent gardens, magnificent fountains, magnificent costumes, magnificent ladies, magnificent gentlemen, magnificent feasts and magnificent operas, plays and concerts!

Everything “the Grand Monarch” had was the very best that could be found; for in his reign France was the leading Power in Europe. So, of course, he had the finest Orchestra.

The “Twenty-Four Violins” surpassed everything of the kind that had been known up to that time. They represented the greatest heights to which brilliancy and sonority could attain.

The “Twenty-Four Violins” played in the Court entertainments; they played in the churches; they played in the gardens; they played on the lawns; and they played for the King and his Court to dance. They also frequently took part in the Court Ballets, when they were dressed in peculiar costumes with masques worn hind part before, so that they gave the ludicrous appearance of playing behind their backs. They played in the gilded and tapestry-hung galleries and Salons of Versailles and Marly and at the banquets of the King. And whenever they appeared they excited the greatest admiration.

Although they were called the Twenty-Four Violins, the whole violin family was represented. There were violins, altos, tenors, basses and double-bass viols; and they played in four-part, or five-part harmony.

“All these parts sounding together,” wrote Mersenne, “make a symphony so precise and agreeable that whoever hears the ‘Twenty-Four Violins’ of the King play all kinds of airs and dances, confesses willingly that he never heard such suave and delicious harmonies before.”

Mersenne also remarked that the deeper instruments, particularly the basses, were much more sonorous and stronger in tone than the violins.

We know of some of their names. There was Constantin; there was Lazarin; there was Bocan;[41] there was Foucard; and there was Léger.

“What could be more elegant than Constantin’s playing?” cries Mersenne. “What could be warmer and more fiery than Bocan’s style? What could be more ingenious and delicate than the diminutions of Lazarin and Foucard? And if you add Léger’s bass above Constantin’s part, you will hear the most perfect harmony.”

[Illustration: CHAMBER MUSIC IN 1635

_By Abraham Bosse_]

Perhaps, if we could hear the gentlemen represented on page 160 draw his bow, we should think his tone very thin and we might not be at all enthusiastic over the style of his playing; but we must remember our ears hear very differently from those that listened to Bocan and Constantin and have been educated along other lines. But certainly the contemporaries of the “Twenty-Four Violins” considered that they were supreme artists. And literature is full of allusions to them.

We also know that Guillaume Dumanoir was first a member and than conductor of the “Twenty-Four Violins.”

Sometimes the King sent his “Twenty-Four Violins” to play for his great princes and favorite courtiers. We learn from a contemporary poem that at a superb dinner given by Cardinal Mazarin in 1660, “the feast was fine, joy universal and the ‘Twenty-Four Violins’ played while we ate melons, _pâtés_, tarts, _biscuit_ and dishes of delicious fruit piled up like obelisks. We enjoyed ourselves immensely while they played a thousand beautiful airs.”

There was hardly a great gentleman who did not have his little band of violins, or his string-quartet, to entertain his friends and to amuse himself. Those who could not afford to support an Orchestra, or a quartet, would hire one on occasions.

There were many associations of musicians in the big cities like Paris and London (survivals of the old minstrel guilds) and in small towns throughout Europe where there were violinists, clavecinists, organists, flute-players and a few players of old instruments—like the lute—so fast becoming obsolete—ready to accept engagements. Such men carried the growing taste for instrumental music, and the latest compositions as well, to remote towns and country-houses. They were really preparing the ground for us to-day, though they did not know it.

At this period Jean-Baptiste Lully comes on the centre of the stage.

When we think of the magnificent reign of Louis XIV—he of the long, curling wig, the hooked nose, the supercilious smile, the long robes and the high-heeled and diamond-buckled pumps—we think of the men who made his century so great. We think of the great artists, Lepautre and Bérain; we think of the architect, Mansart; we think of the great furniture-maker, Boulle; we think of the landscape-gardener, Lenôtre; we think of the great ministers, Condé and Colbert; we think of the great generals, Turenne and Fontenoy; we think of the story-writers, Perrault and La Fontaine; we think of the essayists, La Bruyère and Bossuet; we think of the dramatists, Racine and Molière; and we think of the musician, Jean-Baptiste Lully.

Jean-Baptiste Lully was not a Frenchman. His name was Lulli and he was born in Florence in 1632. He was of humble origin and was taught by an old Franciscan monk to play the guitar and to sing. Lulli was unusually clever. He attracted the attention of the Chevalier de Guise, who was visiting Italy; and this gentleman was so fascinated with him that he took him to France and handed him on to Mademoiselle de Montpensier, the daughter of Gaston d’Orléans, that eccentric person who is known in history as “_La Grande Mademoiselle_.”

_La Grande Mademoiselle_, like every other person of place and wealth, had her own Orchestra; and Lully (as his name was now written) was given a place in it as one of the violins, while the Comte de Nogent, who became interested in him, saw that he had lessons. _La Grande Mademoiselle_ gave very brilliant ballets and concerts at the Tuileries; but when the Royal Army occupied Paris, she was banished to her old _Château de Saint-Fargeau_, which was quite far in the country. Lully went with the rest of the household; and when he was not playing in the Orchestra, or dancing in the ballet, he was employed as page. Some say, indeed, he even served in the kitchen.

Lully, full of tricks and mischief and fun, composed a satirical song on his mistress, _La Grande Mademoiselle_, who was a tempting subject for a young boy’s wit. But _La Grande Mademoiselle_ heard the song; and she very naturally dismissed him from her household. But this disgrace did not affect Lully. In fact, it helped him in his career; for he very soon got a place in the Twenty-Four Violins,—and there he was in the King’s private band! And _La Grande Mademoiselle_ had to see and hear him play very frequently.

_La Grande Mademoiselle_ does not refer to Lully’s insolence in her _Memoirs_. Her version is as follows: “He did not want to stay in the country and asked for his dismissal. I gave it to him and he has since made his fortune, for he was a very great dancer.”

Lully was as clever as he was musically gifted. It was not long before he had charge of all the “King’s Music,” which consisted of the Chamber Music, the Chapel Music and the _Grande Écurie_ (the Stable). The latter comprised the music for hunting and processions and out-of-door _fêtes_. The famous “Twenty-Four Violins” played at dinner, at the Court balls, and gave concerts for the Court, as we have seen.

In 1655 the King created a new Orchestra especially for Lully called the “_Petits Violons_.” At first it consisted of sixteen players, but soon it was increased to twenty-one. This Orchestra played at the Court balls, at the morning toilet (or _lever_) of the King, at the dinner (or _grand couvert_) and on various other occasions. Some persons thought it played even better than the “Twenty-Four.” Lully composed a great number of dances for it—sarabandes, gigues, chaconnes, etc., which delighted the King and his Court. Sometimes the two Orchestras played together under Lully’s guiding hand.

Jean-Baptiste Lully now became the most important musician in Europe. After a time he felt that the violin, which he played so well, was beneath his dignity, so he gave it up and devoted himself to the harpsichord. He staged and danced in ballets for the Court; wrote operas to the poetic _libretti_ of Quinault and produced them with superb scenery; and he _composed all the musical interludes for all of Molière’s plays_!

He also played in several of Molière’s comedies. He took the part of the physician in _Pourceaugnac_ and he played the comical Muphti in _Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme_.

[Illustration: ONE OF THE TWENTY-FOUR VIOLINS OF THE KING, 1688]

Lully ruled like a king.

Lully _was_ the King of Music, not only in France, but in all of Europe in those grand days when France stood at the head of all nations in wealth and power under her “Sun-King.”

One day in 1687, while conducting a _Te Deum_ in honor of the King’s recovery from an illness, Lully, “the better to demonstrate his zeal,” the contemporary account relates, “he himself _beat the time with the cane he used for this purpose_, and he struck himself in the heat of action a blow upon the end of his foot. This caused a small blister.”[42] The quack doctor who was summoned was incompetent and Lully died from blood-poisoning. He left four houses in Paris and a large fortune.

His portraits, which represent him in the big flowing curls of the day—much like the King’s own wig—and with large heavy features, are said by contemporaries to flatter him.

Lully was an undoubted genius and he was always clever. We sometimes wonder if he did not know what he was doing when he wrote his satirical song on “Big Mademoiselle,” who had plenty of enemies ready to laugh at her expense.

Lully always knew how to attract attention to himself and he never seems to have made a mistake.

I think we may call him the first _real conductor of an Orchestra_. Certain it is that Lully was the first to gather together a virtuoso Orchestra and train it by methods that approach those of to-day.

Lully’s Orchestra is, therefore, of the greatest interest to us. So let us stop and examine it: “Lully got together the best Orchestra of his time in Europe. It is perhaps an exaggeration to say that he was the first man to train an Orchestra in France and that before him (accordingly to Perrault) musicians did not know how to play from score and had to learn their parts by heart. But he certainly did improve instrumental execution, especially with regard to the violin, and he created traditions in the conducting of Orchestras, which rapidly became classic and were followed in France and even served as a model in Europe. Among the many foreigners who came to Paris to study was an Alsatian, named Georges Muffat, who especially admired the perfect discipline and strict time of Lully’s Orchestra. He said that Lully’s method was characterized by trueness of tone, by smoothness and evenness of execution, by clean attack and by the way the bows of the whole Orchestra bit into the first chord, that famous ‘first stroke of the bow,’ as well as by the irresistible ‘go,’ the well-defined rhythm and the delightful combination of vigor and flexibility, of grace and vivacity. But of all these qualities, the best was the _rhythm_.”[43]

Robert Eitner called it an “incisive and expressive rhythm.” Others tell us that Lully thought quite as much of delicacy of expression; for there are many marks on his scores, such as “Play softly—almost without touching the notes” and “Do not take off the _sordini_ until you are told to.”

Lully’s Orchestra showed off splendidly in his operas.

“The Orchestra had for its chief instruments: violins in five parts, which played the _ritournelles_, doubled the choruses and beautified the solos with their harmonies. In excited airs expressing quick passion, the voice was accompanied by two violins which played a very elaborate part and when the passion abated returned to their ordinary recitative. Flutes, usually straight flutes and _flutes à bec_, though sometimes ‘transverse,’ or ‘German,’ were much used by Lully. Sometimes they played in unison with other instruments. Sometimes they formed separate ‘concerts’ and sometimes they were combined with the trumpets and violins. The trumpets had a magnificent _rôle_. They played alone in three, or five, parts with the drums. Lully also employed oboes, bassoons, and instruments of percussion, and in his ballets he made a great use of the _tambour de basque_, (tambourine), castanets and drums. He also introduced bag-pipes, guitars and hunting-horns (in _La Princesse d’Élide_); the charcoal-burner’s whistle (in _Acis_); and, like the composer of _Siegfried_, he did not fear the sound of the forge and the noise of anvils (in _Isis_). The characteristic trait of the Orchestra (and one essentially French) is that Lully rarely employed it all at once. He divided his Orchestra into groups that have conversations with one another, or with the voices. This system puts lots of light into the picture, as it were, and the air circulates freely. Strangers were always struck by this.

“Lully’s Orchestra was large. It was carefully recruited and trained by him. The violins were extraordinary, especially in ‘the first stroke of the bow.’ People came from Italy, England and Germany to hear Lully’s Orchestra. Everybody admired his correctness, rhythm, the perfection of his _ensemble_; and, above all, the sweetness, preciseness and smoothness of his violins.”[44]

And now let us see what a contemporary has to say:

“Lully would have nothing but good instrumentalists. He tested them first by making them play _Les songes funestes_ from _Atys_. It was a nimble hand that he demanded. After all, ease of execution was a reasonable qualification to require. He supervised all the rehearsals; and he had so nice an ear that from the far end of the theatre he could detect a violinist who played a wrong note. And he would run up to the man and say, ‘You did that. It is not in your part.’ The artists knew him and they tried to do their work well. The instrumentalists particularly never dared to embellish their parts, for he would not allow any more liberties from them than he would from the singers. He thought it far from proper that they should assume a greater knowledge than his own and add what notes they pleased to their tablature. If this happened he became angry and would make lively corrections. More than once he broke a violin on the back of a man who was not playing to his taste. But when the rehearsal was over, Lully would send for the man, pay him three times the value of his instrument and take him out to dine.”

This characteristic little picture well shows the methods of the conductor.

[Illustration: JEAN BAPTISTE LULLY]

Now these were neither ordinary men, nor ordinary musicians, whom Lully was accustomed to strike with their instruments. Some of them were indeed famous in their art and friendships. It only proves how supreme Lully was that they would submit to his temper and rude treatment. Evidently it was a distinction to play in Lully’s Orchestra. So they put up with anything at rehearsals.

Take, for instance, Descoteaux, one of the most famous flute-players of the time. Descoteaux was a great friend of Boileau, Molière and La Fontaine. He lived to be very old, and Marais (the _viola da gamba_ of Lully’s Orchestra) speaks of him in his _Journal_ in 1723 as follows: “During the _fêtes_ I saw Descoteaux, whom I thought was dead. It was he who carried the German flute to its highest point and who brought to perfection the pronunciation of words in singing according to the rules of grammar. The value of literature he understood better than anybody. He sang words very correctly. Descoteaux had the love of flowers to a supreme degree and he was one of the greatest amateur florists in Europe. He lives in the Luxembourg, where they have given him a little garden, which he cultivates himself. La Bruyère has not forgotten to include him in his _Caractères_ and that fad of his for tulips, to which he gave names as he pleased. He wants to be a philosopher now and talk Descartes; but it is quite enough to be such a musician and such a florist.”

Thirty years before, when the tulip mania had spread from Holland throughout Europe, causing people to win and lose large sums—fortunes indeed—upon choice bulbs—and to spend time and money on the production of new species—(a fad so well described in Dumas’s novel of _The Black Tulip_), La Bruyère wrote of Descoteaux in _De la Mode_ (1691). He did not mention Descoteaux by name; but everybody knew for whom the pen-portrait was intended. Descoteaux had his garden then in the faubourg Saint-Antoine.

Here is La Bruyère’s picture of Lully’s first flute: “The florist has a garden in a faubourg. He runs to it at break of day and he visits it before he goes to bed. We see him as if he were planted and had taken root in the middle of his tulips and before the _Solitaire_. He opens his eyes wide; he rubs his hands with delight; he goes closer to look at it; he kisses it; his heart swells with joy, for he thinks he has never seen it look so beautiful. Then he leaves it for the _Orientale_. From the _Orientale_, he goes to the _Veuve_ (the widow); then he goes to the _Drap d’or_ (Cloth of Gold); then he goes to _Agathe_; and then he goes back to the _Solitaire_, where he takes root again. There he stands or sits, rapt, and forgets all about his dinner. How beautiful her shading, her stripes, her satiny, oily skin! How lovely her chalice! He gazes upon her, admiring God and nature in her; and he would not give up that tulip bulb for a thousand _écus_. But he will be glad to give it away for nothing when tulips go out of fashion and pinks come in. This sensible man, who has a soul and a religion, as well as a fad, returns home fatigued but very contented; for he has seen his tulips!”

Descoteaux was a great virtuoso. So was Philbert, who was also a member of Lully’s Orchestra. Descoteaux and Philbert often played together; and they often played with Vizé, who was just as celebrated on the theorbo and guitar as they were on the flute.

Philbert was famous for his gayety, his wit and his talent for mimicry. He saw the ridiculous in everything and everybody; and he burlesqued everything and everybody to make his friends scream with laughter.

In his chapter on _Des Femmes_, La Bruyère touches him off under the name of Dracon. Addressing Lélie, he says: “But you have Dracon, the flute-player! No one else in his profession can puff out his cheeks so decently in blowing into an oboe, or a flageolet. The number of instruments that he can make talk is infinite! Pleasanter still, he can make children and young women laugh! Who can eat and drink more than Dracon at a single meal? Dracon enlivens a whole company, and he is always the last to get up!”

Poor Dracon had a sad love-story. A woman fell in love with him—not an unusual thing to happen with Philbert—but she poisoned her husband so that nothing might stand in the way of marrying him. At the last moment she confessed her crime; and she was hanged and burned in the old _Place de Grève_ in Paris. Philbert was perfectly innocent; but he, doubtless, suffered terribly—poor fellow!

An artist’s life is not always a happy one!

Both Descoteaux and Philbert were great favorites of Louis XIV. As the Philidor and Hotteterre families were renowned for their skill on the flute, oboe and bassoon, some of them, undoubtedly, played in Lully’s Orchestra. These families were famous in musical Paris for generations.

One of the bassoons was La Bas. He married an opera-singer, named Mlle. Le Rochois. The marriage was somewhat unusual. Mr. Bassoon wrote his promise to marry the lady on the back of a card—the Queen of Spades (_Pique Dame_) and then he tried to get out of it; but the lady showed the Queen of Spades to Lully; and Lully made Mr. Bassoon keep his promise.

Conductors have many duties!

One of the first violins, Verdier, was also the husband of an opera-singer; but we do not know the story of his marriage.

Then there was Jean Baptiste Marchand, who played the lute and also the violin. He wrote such a fine Mass that it was performed in the noble old cathedral of Notre-Dame of Paris.

Then there was Teobaldo di Gatti, a native of Florence, who was so charmed with the “symphonies” in some of Lully’s operas that he had heard (and perhaps played in) that he went to Paris in 1676 especially to see Lully. As soon as he arrived, he hurried to call on the great composer and conductor and told him why he had taken the journey. Lully was highly flattered; and, after hearing him play, he recognized his ability and gave him a place in the Orchestra at once. And here Teobaldo, the _basse de viol_, played for fifty years! He died in 1727, playing in the Orchestra up to the last. Teobaldo was a very well-known figure in Paris; and everybody went to hear his opera, _Scylla_, when it was performed in Paris.

Perhaps the best musicians in all this Orchestra of _virtuosi_ were the two violinists, Lalouette and Collasse, and the bass violist, Marais, whose snap-shot of a fellow-member is quoted on page 165. Each of these three artists became Lully’s assistant conductor.

Jean François Lalouette, the first of Lully’s conductors, was born in 1615. He studied the violin under Guy Leclerc (one of the Twenty-Four Violins) and began to play under Lully when he was only twenty. First he played among the violins; and then Lully made him his secretary and put him to writing recitatives. He also instrumented some of Lully’s operas. But when he boasted that he had composed the best parts of Lully’s opera of _Isis_, Lully discharged him. Lalouette then devoted himself to composition. Finally, he became _maître de chapelle_ at Notre-Dame, Paris. He died in 1728. When Lalouette was dismissed in 1677, Lully gave his place to Pascal Collasse.

Collasse was born in Rheims in 1649. At an early age he was taken to Paris, where he became a chorister at St. Paul’s and a pupil of Lully. He was more fortunate than Lalouette, for he stayed with Lully until the latter’s death and completed his operas that were left unfinished.

Marin Marais was conductor at the same time as Collasse. Perhaps they alternated, perhaps there was so much to do that two were kept busy. It looks as if Lully only conducted when he wanted to—perhaps on a first performance of one of his operas. At any rate, Marais and Collasse worked together. Marais was a Parisian and was born in 1656. He sang in the choir of Sainte-Chapelle and took lessons on the _basse de viole_[45] with Sainte-Colombe. At the end of six months Sainte-Colombe, seeing that his pupil was likely to surpass him, told him that he could teach him nothing more. But this did not satisfy Marais; for he loved the _basse de viole_ passionately and wanted to perfect himself by learning from this master. At that time Sainte-Colombe used to practise in his garden in a little shed he had built around a mulberry-tree where he could be undisturbed. Marais hid behind the shed and listened to his master practise some very difficult passages and bowings that Sainte-Colombe wished to keep for himself. This did not last long because Sainte-Colombe found it out. The next time he heard Marais he congratulated him on his progress. Moreover, one day when Marais was playing for a company of great distinction, Sainte-Colombe, who happened to be present, was asked what he thought of Marais. He replied that “there were always pupils who could surpass their master, but that nobody would ever be found who could surpass Marais.”

Marais became the best performer on the _basse de viole_ of his time. It was Marais who gave the instrument a seventh string and it was he who wrapped the three lowest strings with wire. In 1685 he was soloist in the King’s Chamber Music and he also played in Lully’s Orchestra. Lully gave him lessons in composition. In 1686 he published a collection of pieces for the _basse de viole_. An _Idylle Dramatique_ came out in the _Mercure de Paris_ in 1693.

[Illustration: MARIN MARAIS]

Marais wrote a great deal of music for the strings. “We know,” writes a contemporary, “the fecundity and beauty of the genius of this musician by the number of works that he composed. They are astounding in taste and variety. His great knowledge appears in all his works; but particularly in two pieces: one, in his fourth book called the _Labyrinth_, where, after having gone through various scales and touched on diverse dissonances, and marked his way by grave tones and then by lively and animated ones, describing the uncertainty of a man who is going through a labyrinth, he comes out happily in a graceful and natural _Chaconne_. But he astonished connoisseurs still more by a piece called the _Scale_—_La Gamme_—a symphonic composition which mounts insensibly through all the notes in the octave and then descends again with harmonious and beautiful melodies through all the musical scales.”[46]

Marais also wrote several operas, one of which, _Alcyone_ (1706), had in it a storm that the people of the time thought perfectly terrific; for the drums rolled continually; the violins played on the highest string—the _chanterelle_; the oboes screamed; and the bass viols and bassoons added to the horrors in depicting the agitated sea and the whistling wind.

Many were shocked!

In 1725 Marais, very old, lived in a house in the rue de Lourcine and devoted himself to the cultivation of flowers. He also rented a room and gave lessons two or three times a week to talented pupils.

Marais died in 1728.

Then there was La Londe, who began life as a _valet de chambre_ to the Maréchale de Grammont. He was very talented and became one of the best violinists in Europe. Then there was another violinist known as Baptiste. It is supposed that he was Baptiste Anet, a pupil of Corelli. We know of a few other names: Nicholas Baudry, _dessus de violon_; Julien Bernier, German flute; Bernard Alberty, theorbo; Jean Théobalde, _basse de violon_; and Jean Rabel, clavecin. There was also connected with the Orchestra Jean Fischer (born in Swabia in 1650), who came to Paris when very young and belonged to Lully’s orchestral family as a music-copyist.

An old document came to light in Paris several years ago that gave the pay-roll of Lully’s Orchestra. Here it is:

Batteur de mesure 1,000 livres 10 instruments de petit chœur à 6,000 6,000 ” 12 dessus de violon à 400 4,800 ” 8 basses à 400 3,200 ” 2 quintes à 400 800 ” 2 tailles à 400 800 ” 2 hautes contres à 400 1,200 ” 3 hautbois flutes ou basson à 400 3,200 ” 1 timbalier à 150 150 ” ------ 21,150 livres

This shows that there were forty men in the Orchestra and that the average pay was 400 livres. We also learn that the clavecin player received 600 livres. The ten instruments that had the biggest salary were, of course, Lully’s pet _Petits Violons_.[47]

The Abbé Raguenet, in comparing the Italian and French Orchestras of the time, says: “Besides all the instruments they have in Italy, we still have the oboes, which, with their equally soft and piercing tones have such advantage over the violins in ‘airs of movement,’ and also the flutes such as the illustrious Philbert,[48] Philidor, Descoteaux[49] and the Hotteterres know how to make wail in a manner so touching and to make sigh so amorously in our tender airs.”

How we wish that we could go to one of the King’s Little Suppers at Marly and hear a concert by this famous Orchestra! How we should like to hear Descoteaux and Philbert play a duet on their flutes, or hear the whole Orchestra play a Sarabande, or a Courante, under Lully’s careful conducting!

Charles II of England had not been on the throne very long before he created an Orchestra of Twenty-Four Violins like that he had heard so many times with delight at the Court of Louis XIV.

The chief violinist and leader of this organization was Thomas Baltzar of Lübeck.

“His Majesty, who was a brisk and airy prince, coming to the crown in the flower and vigor of his age was soon, if I may so say,” says Burney, “tired with the grave and solemn way which had been established by Tallis, Byrd and others, ordered the composers of his Chapel to add symphonies with instruments to their anthems; and thereupon established a select number of his private music to play the symphony and _ritournelles_ which he had appointed.

“The old way of consorts was laid aside by the prince immediately after his restoration when he established his band of Twenty-Four Violins after the French model; and the style of Musick has changed accordingly. So that French Musick became in general use at Court and in the theatres. Indeed, performers on the violin had a lift into credit before this period when Baltzar, a Swede, came over and did wonders upon it by swiftness and double stops. But his hand was accounted hard and rough, though he made amends for that by often tuning in the lyre way and playing lessons conformable to it, which were very harmonious.

“During the first years of King Charles’s reign all the Musick in favor with the _beau-monde_ was in the French style, which at that time was rendered famous throughout Europe by the works of Baptiste Lully, a Frenchified Italian and master of the Court Musick at Paris, who enriched the French Musick by Italian harmony which greatly improved their melody. His style was theatrical; and the pieces called _branles_, or _ouvertures_, consisting of an _entrée_ and a _courante_ will ever be admired as the most stately and complete _mouvements_ in Musick. All the composers in London strove hard to imitate Lully’s vein. However, the whole tendency of the air affected the _foot_ more than the _ear_; and no one could listen to an _entrée_ with its starts and leaps without expecting a dance to follow.

“The French instrumental music, however, did not make its way so fast as to bring about a revolution all at once; for during a great part of this King’s reign the old Musick was still used in the country and in many private meetings in London; but _the treble viol was discarded and the violin took its place_.

“It may be ascribed to the peculiar pleasure which King Charles II received from the gay and sprightly sound of the violin that this instrument was introduced at Court and the houses of the nobility and gentry for other purposes than country-dances and festive mirth. Hitherto there seems to have been no public concerts and in the Musick of the chamber, in the performance of _Fancies_ on instruments which had taken the place of vocal madrigals and motets the violin had no admission, the whole business having been done by viols.

“The use of the violin and its kindred instruments, the tenor and violoncello, in Court was doubtless brought from Italy to France and from France to England; for Charles II, who, during the Usurpation had spent a considerable time on the Continent, where he heard nothing but French Musick, upon his return to England, in imitation of Louis XIV, established a band of violins, tenors and basses, instead of the viols, lutes and cornets of which the Court band used to consist.”

Anthony Wood, that quaint old English writer, also throws a light on the question of violin-playing in England at that time.

“The gentlemen in private meetings,” he writes, “which A. W. frequented, played three, four and five parts with viols as treble viol, tenor, counter-tenor and bass, with an organ, virginal or harpsicon, joined with them; and they esteemed a violin to be an instrument only belonging to a common fiddler and could not endure that it should come among them for fear of making their meetings to be vaine and fiddling. But after the Restoration of Charles I, viols began to be out of fashion and only violins used, as treble violin, tenor and bass violin; and the King, according to the French mode, would have Twenty-Four Violins playing before him while he was at meals, as being more airy and brisk than viols.”

Then he goes on to tell us something about the chief violinist.

“Tho. Baltzar, a Lübecker born, and the most famous artist for the violin that the world had yet produced, was now in Oxford; and this day, July 24, A. W. was with him and Mr. Ed. Low, lately organist of Christ Church, at the house of Will Ellis, A. W. did then and there to his very great astonishment hear him play on the violin. He then saw him run up his fingers to the end of the fingerboard of the violin and run them back insensibly and all with alacrity and in very good time, which he, nor any in England, saw the like before. A. W. entertained him and Mr. Low with what the house could then afford and afterwards he invited them to the tavern; but they being engaged to go to other company, he could no more hear him play, or see him play at that time. Afterwards he came to one of the weekly meetings at Mr. Ellis’s house and he played to the wonder of all the auditory; and exercising his finger and instrument several ways to the utmost of his force. Wilson, thereupon, the public professor, the greatest judge of music that ever was, did, after his humorsome way, stoop down to Baltzar’s feet to see whether he had a hoof on, that is to say to see whether he was a devil or not, because he acted beyond the parts of man.”

Burney goes on to say:

“We are able to ascertain the time when concerts consisting of two treble violins, a tenor and a bass violin, or violoncello, came into practice; that they had their origin in Italy can scarce admit of a question; and it is no less certain that they were adopted by the French.

“Indeed the idea of a performance where the instruments for the bass and intermediate parts were in number so disproportionate to the treble, seems to be absurd; and there is reason to suspect that the song ‘Four and Twenty Fiddlers all in a row,’ in D’Urfey’s _Pills to Purge Melancholy_, was written in ridicule of that band of twenty-four violins, which, as the French writers assert, was the most celebrated of any in Europe.”

This old song begins:

“_Four and twenty Fiddlers all in a Row;_ _And there was fiddle fiddle and twice fiddle fiddle._ _’Cause ’twas my Lady’s Birthday,_ _Therefore we kept holiday,_ _And all went to be merry._

“_Four and twenty Drummers all in a Row,_ _And there was tantarra rara, tan, tantarra._ _Rara, rara, rara rar, there was rub, etc._

“_Four and twenty Tabors and Pipers all in a Row_ _And there was whif and dub,_ _And tantarra rara, etc._”

and goes on in the same way for several verses.

The next name of importance after Lully is that of Corelli.

We must not imagine that Corelli suddenly appeared like a great shining star in a dark night. No artist ever leaps suddenly upon an astonished world. Every artist builds on the works of those who have gone before him.

To understand Corelli, we must go back a little and recall something that we have already noticed; and that is the importance of the work of the Italian violin-makers.

Let us then fix it in our minds that when Corelli was born, in 1653, Nicolò Amati had already made a great number of fine violins and that Stradivari was working all through Corelli’s life and that he outlived him. So that the question of violin-playing was the chief one that engaged the attention of the composers of Corelli’s time. They were all working on the question of _how to play the new instrument_, just as the makers had been, and were still working on the _technique_ of the instrument itself. Amati and Stradivari, like those who had gone before them, were trying for _tone_. The composers were now trying to show off the voice, or _tone_, of the new instrument to the best advantage.

This question is of the greatest importance for us to remember, because _the violin is the very foundation of our modern Orchestra_.

At first the violin was the _prima-donna_ of the Orchestra; but eventually the other members of the Violin Family—viola, violoncello and double-bass—also became singers. In short, the Violin Family became the very backbone of the Orchestra.

[Illustration: ARCANGELO CORELLI]

Corelli had much to do with making this the case.

Before Corelli was born in Fusignano in 1653, the Italian composers, particularly those who were attached to the cathedrals and private Orchestras of the wealthy princes and lords of Lombardy—Brescia, Cremona, Mantua and Padua—who were right in the midst of the activities of violin-making, had been writing sonatas, “Flowers” and dances of all kinds for the new violin, to be accompanied by the spinet, the organ, or two or three other stringed-instruments. Their compositions gradually grew more elaborate as they discovered the possibilities of the last new model sent from the workshop of Gasparo di Salò, Maggini, Amati, or Stradivari. There was a great deal more Italian music—and good music, too—composed at that time than most people have any idea of.

Arcangelo Corelli studied the violin under Giovanni Battista Bassani, a musician who is almost forgotten to-day, but who was a great violinist, a composer, a conductor of the Cathedral-music, first in Bologna and afterwards in Ferrara; and he was particularly happy in his writings for the string-quartet. Bassani was about the same age as Corelli; and to his pure instrumental style and knowledge of counterpoint Corelli and modern music owe not a little.

After studying the violin with this master, Corelli went to Rome and studied with Matteo Simonelli, who had had a splendid musical education.

Corelli travelled in Germany and was for a time attached to the Court of the Elector of Bavaria. Then he went to Paris in 1672, and, returning to Italy, settled in Rome. He became a favorite in society and lived in the household of the splendid Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, taking charge of that prince’s music. His regular Monday concerts were a feature of the social and artistic life in Rome.

Pupils swarmed to him. One of them was Geminiani. Corelli became one of the great personages of Rome. When Christina of Sweden went to Rome, Corelli conducted an Orchestra of a hundred and fifty men in her palace. When he died in 1713 he was buried in the Pantheon, not far from Raphael. For years after his death a musical service was held annually at his tomb, where some of his compositions were piously played by his pupils.

Geminiani’s estimate of Corelli’s character seems very just. He said: “His merit was not depth of learning, like that of Alessandro Scarlatti; nor a great fancy, nor rich invention in melody or harmony, but a nice ear and most delicate taste, which led him to select the most pleasing harmonies and melodies and to construct the parts so as to produce the most delightful effect upon the ear.”

At the time of Corelli’s greatest reputation Geminiani asked Scarlatti what he thought of him. Scarlatti answered that “he found nothing greatly to admire in his composition, but was extremely struck with the manner in which he played his concertos and his nice management of his band and uncommon accuracy of the whole performance gave the concertos an amazing effect; and that, even to the eye as well as the ear”; for, continued Geminiani, “Corelli regarded it as essential to the _ensemble_ of a band that their bows should all move exactly together, all up or all down; so, that at his rehearsals, which constantly preceded every public performance of his concertos, he would immediately stop the band if he discovered one irregular bow.”

“There can be no doubt that above all Corelli was a great violin-player and that all he wrote grew out of the very nature of his instrument. In his _Chamber-Sonatas_ and _Concerto-Grossi_ he must be considered the founder of the style of orchestral writing on which the future development is based; while in the _Sonatas_ (op. 5) which have merely an accompanying fundamental bass, he gives a model for the solo sonata; and, thereby, for all writing for the violin as a solo-instrument.

“All his works are characterized by conciseness and lucidity of thought and form, and by a dignified, almost aristocratic, bearing. The slow movements show genuine pathos as well as grace, and bring out in a striking manner the singing-power of the violin.

“Corelli’s _Gavottes_, _Sarabandes_ and other pieces with the form and rhythm of dances, do not materially differ from similar productions of his immediate predecessors and contemporaries, although, like everything that he wrote, they are distinguished by great earnestness and dignity of style and are especially well adapted to the instrument. He was not so much an innovator as a reformer; he did not introduce new striking effects; it cannot be denied that his technique was a limited one—he never goes beyond the third position—but, by rigidly excluding everything that appeared to him contrary to the nature of the instrument, and by adopting and using in the best possible way everything in the existing technique which he considered conformable to the nature of the violin, he not only hindered a threatened development in the wrong direction, but also gave to this branch of art a sound and solid basis, which his successors could, and did, build upon successfully.”[50]

Burney tells us that “After the publication of Corelli’s works, the violin seems to have increased in favor all over Europe. There was hardly a town in Italy, about the beginning of the present century (the Eighteenth), where some distinguished performer on that instrument did not reside.”

The next link in our chain is Scarlatti.

Alessandro Scarlatti was born in Trapani, Sicily, in 1659. We find him at a comparatively early age settled in Naples, where he was celebrated as a singer, and a performer on the harp and the harpsichord and as a composer of operas. He was the chief of the Neapolitan School. Modern critics have proved that on his ideas the great Gluck built his musical edifice.

Scarlatti was a prolific composer. He wrote one hundred and fifteen operas and two hundred masses, besides oratorios, cantatas and other works.

He is of importance to the Orchestra because of the new way he wrote for the instruments. He made the accompaniment of vocal recitative of new importance and gave the Orchestra a great part to do throughout the entire opera. The strings formed the groundwork of his Orchestra; and he also used oboes, flutes, bassoons, trumpets, drums and horns (the latter an innovation).

[Illustration: CONCERT BY SCARLATTI, TARTINI, MARTINI, LOCATELLI, AND LANZETTI]

Scarlatti was the creator of modern opera, and the “Father of Classical Music,” the forerunner of Gluck, Mozart and Haydn and many others. Dr. Burney put the debt that great composers owe to Scarlatti concisely when he said: “I find part of Scarlatti’s property among the stolen goods of all the best composers of the first forty years of the present century.”

With regard to his treatment of the violoncello, Dr. Burney says:

“The violoncello parts of many of his cantatas were so excellent that whoever was able to do them justice was thought a supernatural being. Geminiani used to relate that Francischello, a celebrated performer on the violoncello at the beginning of this century, accompanied one of these cantatas at Rome so admirably, while Scarlatti was at the harpsichord, that the company, being good Catholics and living in a country where miraculous powers have not yet ceased, were firmly persuaded it was not Francischello who had played the violoncello, but an angel that had descended and assumed his shape.”

Scarlatti also divided his strings into four parts and carefully balanced with them the wind instruments that he used; but the strings were the most important and stood out in relief against the wind; or, if we prefer to think of the matter another way, the wind was subordinate to the strings.

Very little is known regarding his private life.

His son, Domenico, was also a prolific composer and was a famous player on the harpsichord (_Gravicembalo_). To him is due the original idea of the _form of the Sonata which Haydn afterwards perfected_. Domenico Scarlatti is remembered, too, for his “_Cat’s Fugue_,” written on the notes that his favorite cat touched one day when she walked down the keys of the harpsichord.

Next in line comes Rameau, who was born in Dijon, in 1683, just two years before Bach. He was at the height of his fame when Mozart was born. Rameau came of a musical family, showed his talent early, played the clavecin at seven and studied the violin and organ. Eventually he settled in Paris. First he wrote little musical comedies, and, finally, operas—_Hippolyte et Arcie_, _Les Indes Galantes_, _Castor et Pollux_ are some of them—and ballets, which as M. Choquet truly says, “contain beauties which defy the caprices of fashion and will command the respect of true artists for all time.” Rameau died in 1774. Rameau looked very much like Voltaire. He always used the violin when composing. Rameau’s new ideas of orchestration created animosity among the followers of Lully.

What did Rameau do for the Orchestra?

_He gave to the different members of the Orchestra an individual rôle_; he extended the technique of the violins; he made an increasing use of arpeggios; and he was the first to use _pizzicato_ chords with all the strings at once. He also made a delicate and light use of the woodwind.

Every day Rameau is taking a larger place in Music. French critics consider him the most _French_ of all their composers.

[Illustration: RAMEAU

_By Restout_]

While the Italian Renaissance had developed the opera, the dance and music that delighted the drawing-room, under the bright skies of Italy, in the colder North, under the influence of stern Martin Luther, the _Chorale_, or hymn-tune, had arisen to supply the needs of the new Lutheran religion. The _Chorale_ is austere and solemn, although melodious. It was largely owing to these chorales that the new Reformed religion made its way so rapidly among the people of Northern Germany. The sources of these Chorales were various: some came from old church-hymns; others, from folk-songs. A good example is the “_Old Hundredth Tune_” beginning “Praise God from whom all blessings flow.”

The custom of playing these _Chorales_ on the organ with elaborate accompaniments and treating them also as themes for fugues and counterpoint was a special fancy of the German organists.

Germany had the finest organists in Europe in the Seventeenth Century; and there was no greater one among them than Johann Sebastian Bach.

Moreover, no one understood the _Chorale_ better, or made more use of it, than Bach.

Bach’s life was uneventful. He was born in 1685 in Eisenach, near the Wartburg (celebrated for the legend of Tannhäuser), was organist at Weimar and _Kapellmeister_ at Cothen for the Prince Leopold and Cantor of the Thomas School in Leipzig from 1723 until his death in 1750. He was also organist and director of the two chief churches in Leipzig.

Bach wrote every form of music except the opera. His industry was prodigious. “In Bach’s hands the music of the period marked its climax of expression, the _Chorale_ was idealized to its highest pitch, the combination of Orchestra, chorus and solo voices in the Passions, the B-minor mass and the Church Cantatas became pillars of the house of musical art for all time, the principle of equal temperament[51] was fixed for good in Clavichord work, the _violin became a solo instrument which could speak unaided for itself_, and the organ came finally into its own. All this immense range of work was accomplished by an unobtrusive, unadvertising man of the highest moral force and of simple, deeply religious and deep-feeling character, a personality who would have considered it the highest possible tribute to be called the worthy father of a devoted family.”[52]

When Bach and his son, Philipp Emmanuel, went to work to draw their family tree, they found they had fifty-three musicians to hang on the boughs.

The whole Bach family played the organ and every other keyboard instrument. They were all marvellous players of the harpsichord.

Bach’s contribution to the development of the Orchestra is that he treated each separate instrument lovingly and as if it were an individual, so that _he prepared the way for the occasional solos in orchestral compositions_. He wrote for a great many instruments that were rapidly going out of fashion, such as the _oboe d’amore_, the _oboe di caccia_, the _viola d’amore_ and the _viola da gamba_.

Bach stands at the parting of the ways of ancient music and modern music. Bach is the bridge between the Old and the New. He is often called the “musicians’ musician.”

Bach’s four Overtures for Orchestra are usually spoken of as _Suites_; but they are compositions on the Lully type. Critics have pointed out that Bach uses instruments to get the effect of _fulness_ rather than _color_.

[Illustration: JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH

_By Lissewsky_]

Bach’s compositions for a solo violin, unaccompanied, are the most stupendous works ever written by anybody for a single instrument. Great players have always delighted in mastering their technical difficulties, which are very great.

Handel was born the same year as Bach, in 1685, though he seems a little nearer to us somehow. While Bach was living his quiet, uneventful life, Handel was gaining experience in the world. He was a native of Saxony and was the son of a surgeon, who considered music a degrading business. We know under what difficulties little Handel practised the spinet in the garret. The Duke of Saxe-Wessenfels heard him play and persuaded his father to let him follow the bent of his genius. Handel played in the Orchestra in the Opera House of Hamburg, “the Northern Venice,” a cosmopolitan city where the people had the best of music.

Then Handel travelled in Italy, where he met the famous Alessandro Scarlatti[53] and had his opera of _Agrippina_ performed. Then he went to the Court of Hanover to become _Kapellmeister_.

But Handel wanted a larger field for his activity, and so he went to London in 1710 and brought out several operas. Queen Anne was reigning at this time and her Court was famous for its brilliant literary men—Pope, Addison, Steele, Sheridan and many others; and Handel’s music pleased many of the Court, as well as the Queen herself. In 1713 he wrote a _Birthday Ode_ for her, which delighted Her Majesty. It was literally “to the Queen’s taste.”

But Queen Anne died in 1714; and a strange thing happened for Handel—the Elector of Hanover, his old patron, was called to the British throne as George I. Handel now became director of the King’s Music.

In 1717 he left George I to become Chapel-master for the Duke of Chandos, who had a palace at Cannons, not far from London, where he lived in great magnificence. For instance, he had a guard of a hundred Swiss soldiers and a chapel like those of Italy. His Orchestra was of the best.

Handel stayed at Cannons three years and then he became director of the Italian opera in London, where he produced one opera after another, some of which brought forth witty satires from Addison and Steele, but all of which attracted large audiences. Most of them were on mythological subjects, were written in the Italian style and were superbly staged. Occasionally, a beautiful aria from one or another of these operas appears on a programme to-day; and it is so noble and lovely that we long to hear the old operas themselves. As a rule, these arias are accompanied by several instruments supporting one that plays an _obbligato_ part; and these show what Handel did to develop and exhibit the _technique_ of various instruments.

The last years of his life were devoted to composing the magnificent oratorios of _Saul_, _Samson_, _The Messiah_ and _Israel in Egypt_.

[Illustration: HANDEL

_By Thomson_]

Handel became a naturalized English subject and lived far into the reign of George II. When he died in 1751, he was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Handel’s contribution toward building up our modern Orchestra is that he helped make it more solid, more sonorous and more vital.

The balance of Handel’s Orchestra was very different from ours, because of the overwhelming number of woodwind instruments. If he had twenty-five strings, he would sometimes have as many as five oboes and five bassoons! The clarinet had not then come into use, and some stringed and some woodwind instruments that Handel used became obsolete after his death. Handel was particularly fond of the oboe: it is often conspicuous in his scores.

Handel made his Orchestra a very strong ally of his operas and his oratories. He conducted seated at the clavier, or organ, and accompanied the singers with the most marvellous art possible to imagine, following their fancies and pleasures and whims; and then, when they had finished, he would _improvise_ to suit his own taste. His audience was always enraptured.

It is little wonder, therefore, that Handel’s orchestration sounds scanty to our ears, if his works are played from the original scores; for we miss the filling in of all this elaborate work done on the spur of the moment and in all the excitement and exhilaration of the concert-hall before the audience who had learned what to expect.

We are told that when Handel conducted one of his oratorios the chorus had their leaders who listened to the organ from which they took their cues. The Orchestra was divided into three sections. Section No. I was the _Concertino_, consisting of a first and second violin and a solo violoncello. Section No. II was the _Concerto Grossi_, consisting of eight first violins, eight second violins, six violas, four to six violoncellos and four double basses. Section No. III was the _Ripienist_, or the supplementary band, consisting of six first violins, six second violins, four violas, three to four violoncellos and three basses. This _Ripienist_ band was employed to fill in the harmonies, or to support the solos, and the _concertante_ parts.

The picture facing this page, taken from an old print in the British Museum, represents Handel seated at the clavecin (a _cembalo_ with two keyboards), of which the lid is raised. On his right hand is the violoncellist. Before his eye are two violins and two flutes. The solo singers are near him, on his left, close to the clavecin. The rest of the instrumentalists are behind him, out of sight. “Thus his directions and his glances would control the _Concertino_ who would transmit, in their turn the chief conductor’s wishes to the _Concerto Grossi_ and they, in their turn, to the _Ripienists_. In place of the quasi-military discipline of the modern Orchestra, controlled under the _bâton_ of a chief conductor the different bodies of the Handelian Orchestra governed one another with elasticity; and it was the incisive rhythm of the _cembalo_ that put the whole mass into motion.”[54]

We rarely hear any of Handel’s music with exactly the Orchestra for which he wrote. All conductors realize the difficulty of having anyone improvise on the organ, or piano, to fill in the bald and empty spaces. Moreover, it would confuse the singers and terrify the audience. Improvising at concerts has gone out of fashion.

[Illustration: HANDEL CONDUCTING THE ORCHESTRA

_Handel at the Cembalo_]

This was even realized in Mozart’s day; and so Mozart wrote those beautiful “additional accompaniments” to _The Messiah_, which give to that oratorio no little of its grace and nobility. Mozart, as we know, was a genius in instrumentation and even in his day people demanded something different from the Handelian concert.

Handel, however, was always seeking for novel effects. He was one of the first to introduce the horn into the Orchestra and he was “the first to assert the expressive personality of the violoncello.”[55] He also appreciated the fantastic and lugubrious quality of the bassoons; experimented with all kinds of instruments; and used the kettledrums as a solo for Jupiter’s oath in _Semele_. This was so unusual and so startling that Sheridan in his burletta on _Jupiter_ had a pistol fired suddenly, upon which one of the characters exclaims: “This hint I took from Handel!”

Handel was considered horribly noisy in his day. His friend, Goupy, the artist, made a caricature that doubtless amused Handel, who saw himself represented at the organ as a huge, unwieldy figure with a boar’s head and enormous tusks (referring to his violent temper) and the room full of horns, trumpets and kettledrums, while a donkey is also present braying loudly and in the distance a battery of artillery is ready for action.

It is noticeable, too, in Handel’s Orchestra, as in Bach’s, that we get no (or very little) tone-color. Handel’s Orchestra is neutral in tint. The organ and the keyboard idea is still prevailing—all the instruments combine, as it were, to produce the one hue.

“But great painter as Handel was, he did not work so much through the brilliancy, variety and novelty of his tone-colors as by the beauty of his designs and his effects of light and shade. With a voluntarily restrained palette and by satisfying himself with the sober colors of the strings, he yet was able to produce surprising and thrilling effects. Volbach has shown that he did not contrast and mix his strings but divided the same family of instruments into different groups. In the introduction to _Esther_ (1732), the violins are divided into five groups, in the _Resurrection_ (1708) into four groups. The violas are sometimes divided into two, the second group being reinforced by the third violin, or the violoncellos. On the other hand, when Handel wanted to do so, he reduced his instrumental forces by suppressing the viola and the second violin, whose places were taken by the clavecin. All his orchestral art is the true instinct of balance and economy, which, with the most restricted means in managing a few colors yet knows how to obtain as powerful impressions as our musicians to-day with their crowded palettes.

“One is prone to accept too readily the idea that expressive _nuance_ is the privilege of modern musical art and that Handel’s Orchestra knew only the great theatrical contrasts between force and sweetness, or loudness and softness. It is nothing of the kind. The range of Handel’s _nuances_ is extremely varied. We find with him _pianissimo_, _piano_, _mezzo piano_, _mezzo forte_, _un poco più F._, _un poco F._, _forte_, _fortissimo_. We never find the orchestral _crescendo_ and _decrescendo_, which hardly appears marked until the time of Jomelli and the school of Mannheim; there is no doubt, however, but that it was practised long before it was marked in the music. The President of Brosses wrote in 1739 from Rome: ‘The voices like the violins used with light and shade with unconscious swelling of sound, which augments the force from note to note, even to a very high degree since its use as a _nuance_ is extremely sweet and touching.’ And endless examples occur in Handel of long _crescendi_ and _diminuendi_ without their expression being marked in the scores. Another kind of _crescendo_ and _diminuendo_—made on the same note—was very common in the time of Handel. His friend, Geminiani, helped to set the fashion.

“As Geminiani explains it: ‘The sound ought to commence softly and should swell out in a gradual fashion to about half its value. Then, it should diminish to the end. The movement of the bow should continue without interruption.’”[56]

Padre Martini said that Gluck combined in the music-drama “all the finest qualities of Italian and many of those of French music with the great beauties of the German orchestra.”

Gluck began where Handel left off. Handel had already treated mythological subjects. He had also written an _Alceste_ and an _Armida_ before Gluck appeared on the scene. Handel (who is said not to have liked Gluck at all) was Gluck’s chosen master on account of “the wonderful beauties of his melodies, the grandeur of his style and his rhythms like armies on the march.”

Gluck not only followed Handel, but he adored him. He kept Handel’s portrait over his bed!

“Gluck gave the Orchestra a new life, assigning the first place to it in some cases, letting it express the feeling that captivates the listener. With him violins, oboes and trombones are not merely sonorous agents; they are living entities, personages of action. Through the Orchestra he adds dazzling beauty to a temple scene, or a scene in the Elysian Field; and by little touches on certain instruments here and there he can make us feel the mystery of the infernal regions. Gluck’s great gift to the Orchestra was to make it _speak_.”[57]

Christoph Willibad Gluck was born near Neumarkt in the Upper Palatinate (Austria) in 1714. He was educated in music in Prague and in Vienna; and fortunately attracted the attention of Prince Melzi, who took him to Milan to direct his private Orchestra. We all know how his successful operas in Vienna prepared the way for still greater triumphs in Paris, where Gluck enjoyed the patronage of the Queen Marie Antoinette, who, being an Austrian, had known and loved Gluck’s works in Vienna.

[Illustration: GLUCK

_By Duplessis_]

All the histories and memoirs of the time speak of the quarrel between the followers of Gluck and Piccini. Piccini represented the old Italian style and Gluck stood for the new dramatic style—the latest thing out it happened to be. The Piccinists accused Gluck of composing operas with little melody, no truth to nature, little elegance or refinement, and a noisy Orchestra. “Gluck’s modulations,” they said, “were awkward and he had no originality, no finish, no polish.” In short, Gluck was everything that was abominable.

Dr. Burney informs us that: “No door in Paris was opened to a visitor without the question being asked—‘Monsieur, are you a Picciniste, or a Gluckiste?’”

The Piccinists are forgotten: the Gluckists still live. We are among them; for, to our way of thinking, nothing more noble and inspired than _Orfeo_ was ever written. And if polish and elegance are to be found anywhere in music, they appear in the scores of Gluck.

“Yet, if he had merely carried to perfection the work begun by Lully and Rameau; if his efforts had been limited to removing the harpsichord from the Orchestra, introducing the harp and trombones, employing the clarinets, scoring with skill and effect, giving more importance and interest to the overture and using with such magic effect the artifice of momentary pauses to vary or emphasize speech in music,—if he had done no more than this, he would have earned our gratitude, but he would not in that case have been one of the monarchs of art.

“What then did he accomplish that was so extraordinary?

“He grasped the idea that the mission of music was not merely to afford gratification to the senses, and he proved that the expression of moral qualities is within its reach. He disdained all such tricks of the trade as do not appeal to the heart—in fact, he preferred the Muses to the Sirens. He aimed at depicting historic, or legendary, characters and antique social life; and in his works of genius he put into the mouths of each of his heroes accents suited to their sentiments and to the spirit of the time in which they lived. He made use of the Orchestra to add to the force of a dramatic situation, or (in one noble instance) to contrast external repose with the internal agitation of a remorseful conscience. In a word, all his French operas show him to have been a noble musician, a true poet and a deep thinker.”

Gluck also contributed to the development of the ballet and made the dance a vital part of the story of the opera, as, for instance, the ballet of the Spirits of the Blest in _Orfeo_.

His ballet-music is very beautiful in form and melody and choice of instruments that play it.

“With Gluck,” says Romain Rolland, “the ballet lost some of the delightful exuberance it had had in Rameau’s operas; but what it lost in originality and richness, it gained in simplicity and purity; and the dance airs in _Orfeo_ are like classic bas-reliefs, the frieze of a Greek Temple.”

“To think,” said Beethoven in his last days, looking at a picture of Haydn’s birthplace, “that so great a man should have first seen the light in a peasant’s wretched cottage!”

Haydn’s career once again proves that genius finds its level in the world. Haydn was born of poor parents in Rohrau, a small Austrian village near the borders of Hungary, in 1732. We all know how as a child he sang in the choir at St. Stephen’s in Vienna and played the kettledrums, piano and violin. At an early age he began to compose; and when he was about thirty he became assistant director of music in Prince Esterhazy’s house at Eisenstadt.

The story of Haydn’s entering into the service of one of the most important princes in Europe is interesting.

Haydn had attracted the attention of Prince Esterhazy by one of his symphonies; and friends of Haydn’s arranged that he should compose a symphony to be performed at Eisenstadt on the Prince’s birthday.

“Haydn executed it and it is worthy of him. The day of the ceremony having arrived, the Prince, seated on his throne and surrounded by his court, attended at the usual concert. Haydn’s symphony was begun. Scarcely had the performers got to the middle of the _first Allegro_, than the Prince interrupted them and asked who was the author of that fine composition.

“‘Haydn,’ replied Friedberg, and he made the poor young man, all trembling, come forward.

“‘What!’ exclaimed Prince Esterhazy, ‘is it this Moor’s music?’ (Haydn’s complexion, it must be confessed, gave some room for this sarcasm.) ‘Well, Moor,’ he said, ‘from henceforth you remain in my service. What is your name?’

“‘Joseph Haydn.’

“‘Surely I remember the name. You are now engaged to me. Go and dress yourself like a professor. Do not let me see you any more in this trim. You cut a pitiful figure. Get a new coat, a wig and buckles, a collar and red heels to your shoes; and I particularly desire that your shoes may be high, in order that your stature may correspond to your intelligence. You understand me? Go your way and everything will be given to you.’

“Haydn kissed the Prince’s hand, and retired to a corner of the Orchestra, a little grieved at being obliged to hide his natural hair and youthful figure. The next morning he appeared at his Highness’s Levee imprisoned in the grave costume which had been ordered. He had the title of Second Professor of Music, but his new comrades called him simply _the Moor_.”[58]

In 1762 Prince Nicolaus Esterhazy succeeded his brother and Haydn soon became head of the entire music of the household. The “Magnificent Prince Esterhazy,” as he was called, now turned an old hunting-lodge into a splendid residence, making it a miniature Versailles. The house was not only palatial, but there were deer-parks, gardens, hot-houses, summer-houses, temples, grottoes, “hermitages,” two theatres equipped with scenery and also a chapel. The musical establishment was large. The Prince paid big salaries and the musicians were engaged for several years at a time. There was a large opera company, a large Orchestra and individual solo players on certain instruments. Haydn had charge of it all. He was on friendly terms with Prince Esterhazy himself, for whose _viola di bardone_, or _baryton_, he had to write a new piece every day. Haydn lived at “Esterhazy,” as the place was called, until Prince Nicolaus died in 1790. Then he went to Vienna, where he died in 1809.

Haydn was fortunate in having such a patron as Prince Esterhazy; for, of course, he had no trouble in getting his works performed. For thirty years he had an opera-house, an Orchestra—and both of the best—and a cultivated audience as well; for Prince Esterhazy entertained royal and noble personages and amateurs from every nook and corner of Europe.

When Haydn first went to Eisenstadt the Orchestra numbered eighteen instruments, six violins, viola, violoncello, double-bass, flute, two oboes, two bassoons and four horns. Then it was enlarged to twenty-two and twenty-four instruments, including trumpets and kettledrums. There was a great advance in the Orchestra of Esterhazy as the years rolled by; and the last symphonies that Haydn wrote are very much richer than his early ones.

Haydn represents the Orchestra in the same way that Gluck represents the music-drama, Bach the organ and Handel the oratorio. He has been called the “Father of the Orchestra”; and the name, “Papa Haydn,” that Mozart gave to him, has been affectionately retained by posterity.

Haydn fixed the form of the quartet and the Symphony. Mozart and Beethoven were his actual pupils as well as followers. Yet from Mozart, Haydn learned much in the way of writing for instruments. Haydn left the Orchestra in shape for Beethoven to carry still farther.

Haydn’s Orchestra consisted of the string-quartet, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets and kettledrums.

His practical knowledge of the kettledrums made him very partial to them; and he was the first to give this instrument an individuality and artistic part in the Orchestra.

Haydn introduced a loud blow on the kettledrum in the _Surprise Symphony_ to startle and wake up the audience. “Here all the women will scream,” he laughingly said when he wrote the part.

Regarding Haydn’s quartets we have the following clever and humorous analysis by Stendhal:

“An intelligent woman said that when she heard a quartet of Haydn’s she fancied herself present at the conversation of four agreeable persons. She thought that the first violin had the air of an eloquent man of genius of middle age who supported a conversation, the subject of which he had suggested. In the second violin she recognized a friend of the first, who sought by all possible means to display himself to advantage, seldom thought of himself and kept up the conversation rather by assenting to what was said by the others than by advancing any ideas of his own. The alto was a grave, learned and sententious man. He supported the discourse of the first violin by laconic maxims, striking for their truth. The bass was a worthy old lady, rather inclined to chatter, who said nothing of much consequence, and yet was always desiring to put in a word. But she gave an additional grace to the conversation, and while she was talking, the others had time to breathe. It was, however, evident that she had a secret inclination for the alto, which she preferred to the other instruments.”

[Illustration: HAYDN

_By Gutenbrunn_]

Stendhal, who knew Haydn well, also writes:

“You must know, my friend, that before Haydn, no man had conceived the idea of an Orchestra composed of eighteen kinds of instruments. He is the inventor of _prestissimo_, the very idea of which made the old square toes of Vienna shudder. In music, as in everything else, we have little conception of what the world was a hundred years back; the _Allegro_, for instance, was only an _Andantino_.

“In instrumental music Haydn has revolutionized the details as well as the masses. It is he who has obliged the wind instruments to execute _pianissimo_.

“In the same way as Leonardo da Vinci sketched in a little book which he always carried with him the singular faces he met with, Haydn also carefully noted down the passages and ideas which came into his head. When he was in good spirits and happy he hastened to his little table and wrote subjects for airs and minuets. Did he feel himself disposed to tenderness and melancholy, he noted down themes for _Andantes_ and _Adagios_; and, afterwards, in composing, when he wanted a passage of such a character, he had recourse to his note-book.

“Haydn, like Buffon, thought it necessary to have his hair put in the same nice order, as if he were going out, and dressed himself with a degree of magnificence. Frederick II had sent him a diamond ring; and Haydn confessed that, often, when he sat down to his piano, if he had forgotten to put on his ring, he could not summon a single idea. The paper on which he composed must be of the finest and whitest possible; and he wrote with so much neatness and care that the best copyist could not have surpassed him in the regularity and clearness of his characters. It is true that his notes had such little heads and slender tails that he used, very properly, to call them his _flies’ legs_.

“It is said that no man had such a knowledge of the various effects and relations of colors and the contrasts which they were capable of forming as Titian. Haydn, likewise, possessed an incredible acquaintance with each of the instruments which composed his Orchestra. As soon as his imagination supplied him with a passage, a chord, or a single note, he immediately saw by what instrument it should be executed, in order to produce the most sonorous and agreeable effect. If any doubt arose during the composition of a symphony, his situation at Eisenstadt enabled him easily to resolve it. He rang his bell in the way agreed on to announce a rehearsal; the performers repaired to the rehearsing-room. He made them execute the passage which he had in his mind in two or three different ways; and, having made his choice, he dismissed them and returned to resume his composition.

“Sometimes he supposed that one of his friends, the father of a numerous family, ill provided with the goods of fortune, was embarking for America in the hope of improving his circumstances. The first events of the voyage formed the symphony. It began with the departure. A favorable breeze gently agitated the waves. The ship sailed smoothly out of the port; while on shore the family of the voyager followed him with tearful eyes and his friends made signals of farewell. The vessel had a prosperous voyage and reached at length an unknown land. A savage music, dances and barbarous cries were heard towards the middle of the symphony. The fortunate navigator made advantageous exchanges with the natives of the country, loaded his vessel with rich merchandise and at length set sail for Europe with a prosperous wind. Here the first part of the symphony returned. But soon the sea begins to be rough, the sky grows dark and a dreadful storm confounds together all the chords and accelerates the time. Everything is in disorder on board the vessel. The cries of the sailors, the roaring of the waves, and the whistling of the wind, carry the melody of the chromatic scale to the highest degree of the pathetic. Diminished and excited chords, modulations, succeeded by semitones, describe the terror of the mariners.

“But, gradually, the sea becomes calm, favorable breezes swell the sails and port is reached. The happy father casts anchor in the midst of the congratulations of his friends and the joyful cries of his children and of their mother, whom he at length embraces safe on shore. Everything at the end of the symphony is happiness and joy.

“I cannot recollect to which of the symphonies this little romance served as a clue. I know that he mentioned it to me, as well as to Professor Pichl, but I have totally forgotten it.

“For the subject of another symphony, Haydn had imagined a sort of dialogue between Jesus Christ and an obstinate sinner, and afterwards followed the parable of the Prodigal Son.

“From these little romances were taken the names by which our composer sometimes designated his symphonies. Without the knowledge of this circumstance, one is at a loss to understand the meaning of the titles _The Fair Circassian_, _Roxalana_, _The Hermit_, _The Enamoured Schoolmaster_, _The Persian_, _The Poltroon_, _The Queen_, _Laudohn_, all which names indicate the little romance which guided the composer. I wish the names of Haydn’s symphonies had been retained instead of the numbers.”

When Dr. Burney had nearly finished his immense _History of Music_ he wrote the following words:

“I am now happily arrived at that part of my narrative where it is necessary to speak of Haydn, the admirable and matchless Haydn! from whose productions I have received more pleasure late in my life, when tired of most other Music, than I ever received in the most ignorant and rapturous part of my youth, when everything was new and the disposition to be pleased undiminished by criticism, or satiety.

“The first time I met with his name in the German catalogues of Music is in that of Breitkopf of Leipzig, 1763, to a _Divertimento a Cembalo_, _3 Concerti a Cembalo_, _6 Trios_, _8 Quados_, or _Quartets_, and _6 Symphonies in four_. The chief of his early music was for the Chamber. He is said at Vienna to have composed before 1782 a hundred and twenty-four pieces for the _baryton_, for the use of his prince, who is partial to that instrument and a great performer upon it. Besides his numerous pieces for instruments he has composed many operas for the Esterhazy theatre and Church Music that has established his reputation as a deep contrapuntist.

“His innumerable symphonies, quartets and other instrumental pieces, which are so original and so difficult, have the advantage of being rehearsed and performed at Esterhazy under his own direction, by a band of his own forming, who have apartments in the palace and practise from morning to night in the same room, according to Fischer’s account, like the students in the conservatories of Naples.

“Ideas so new and varied were not at first so universally admired in Germany as at present. The critics in the northern parts of the empire were up in arms. And a friend at Hamburg wrote me word in 1772 that ‘the genius, fine ideas and fancy of Haydn, Ditters and Filtz were praised, but their mixture of serious and comic was disliked, particularly as there is more of the latter than the former in their works; and as for rules, they knew but little of them.’ This is a censure which the admirable Haydn has long since silenced; for he is now as much respected by professors for his science as invention. Indeed his compositions are in general so new to the player and hearer that they are equally unable, at first, to keep pace with his inspiration. But it may be laid down as an axiom in Music that whatever is _easy_ is _old_, and what the hand, eye and ear are accustomed to; and, on the contrary, what is _new_ is, of course, _difficult_, and not only scholars but professors have it to learn. The first exclamation of an embarrassed performer and a bewildered hearer is, that the Music is very _odd_, or very _comical_; but the queerness and the comicality cease, when, by frequent repetition, the performer and hearer are at their ease. There is a general cheerfulness and good humor in Haydn’s _Allegros_ which exhilarate every hearer. But his _Adagios_ are often so sublime in ideas and the harmony in which they are clad that though played by inarticulate instruments they have a more pathetic effect on my feelings than the finest opera air united with the most exquisite poetry. He has likewise movements that are sportive, _folâtres_, and even grotesque, for the sake of variety; but they are only the _entremets_, or rather _intermezzi_, between the serious business of his other movements.”

Haydn’s _Symphonies_ are to-day considered very simple and easy, so it is interesting to learn from Dr. Burney that a hundred years ago they were thought difficult and full of new effects and violent contrasts.

What would Dr. Burney have thought of Richard Strauss!

And now let us place by the side of Dr. Burney’s criticism one by a writer of to-day, which will show us how Haydn is regarded at the present time.

“Of Haydn’s general style as a composer it is hardly necessary to speak. To say that a composition is ‘Haydnish’ is to express in one word what is well understood by all intelligent amateurs. Haydn’s music is like his character—clear, straightforward, fresh and winning, without the slightest trace of affectation, or morbidity. Its perfect transparency, its firmness of design, its fluency of instrumental language, the beauty and inexhaustible invention of its melody, its studied moderation, its child-like cheerfulness—these are some of the qualities which mark the style of this most genial of all the great composers.”[59]

Mozart was, perhaps, the greatest musical genius that ever lived. There was no branch of music in which he did not shine. His life was short. He only lived thirty-five years, but every moment of it was full of music and experience.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in Salzburg in 1756 and died in Vienna in 1791. He picked out chords on the harpsichord when he was only a baby and began to compose when he was but four years old. His sister was also a musical genius; and his father, Leopold Mozart, a violinist of reputation, took these two children on concert tours throughout Europe. They visited all the German cities, Paris and London, and in 1769-1770 they travelled through Italy, where Mozart performed in Rome the great feat of writing from memory Allegri’s famous _Miserere_ performed in the Sistine Chapel during Passion Week.

In reviewing Mozart’s life it seems almost impossible that anyone could have composed so many works, travelled so much and lived so much in the world besides. His long list of compositions includes operas, church-music, pieces for the piano, chamber-music, concertos for nearly every kind of known instrument; and for the Orchestra there is an astonishing number of works, among which forty-nine _Symphonies_ are included!

Such genius cannot be accounted for, nor explained: it has to be accepted. We cannot stop to talk of his many great works. We can only say that the older one grows and the more musical knowledge and experience one has, the more one appreciates the charm and greatness of Mozart.

Mozart had the gift of beauty and grace; and those two qualities blended together produce that quality so hard to define and so easy to feel,—_charm_. _Mozart has charm._

Whatever Mozart does, he, like Raphael, to whom he has been compared, is always beautiful. He is sunny and fresh and smiling, clear and delightful. His melodies, moreover, are like a never-failing spring,—they flow from an inexhaustible source.

Stendhal wrote in 1808:

“Like Raphael, Mozart embraced his art in its whole extent. Raphael appears to have been unacquainted with one thing only,—the mode of painting figures on a ceiling in contracted proportion, or what is termed foreshortening. As for Mozart, I am not aware of any department in which he has not excelled: operas, symphonies, songs, airs for dancing,—he is great in everything. The most remarkable circumstance in his music, independently of the genius displayed in it, is the novel way in which he employs the Orchestra, especially the wind instruments. He draws surprising effects from the flute, an instrument of which Cimarosa hardly ever made any use. He enriches the accompaniment with all the beauties of the finest symphonies.”

[Illustration: MOZART

_By Cignaroli_]

What did Mozart do towards the development of our modern Orchestra? The question is easily answered. Mozart gave the Orchestra _tone-color_.

We have seen that Bach’s Orchestra and Handel’s Orchestra were both neutral in tint; or, if we prefer, black and white. The instruments all played their separate parts, but their individual _voices_ had as yet hardly been discovered. It is true that Bach and Handel had written solo parts for various instruments, but, as a general thing, the melodies could be sung by one instrument as well as any other. But Mozart had very different ideas regarding instruments. To him a violin was a violin, a flute was a flute, a bassoon was a bassoon and a clarinet was a clarinet. Each instrument had to _speak for itself and with its own true voice_, or _tone-color_. Mozart originated what we may call an _orchestral palette_.

We have all seen a painter’s palette, with the colors arranged in groups of reds and blues and greens, and so on, in their different gradations, or shades. Mozart’s orchestral palette was arranged similarly, only instead of paints he grouped his instruments—his strings, his woodwind, his brass—as he pleased; and he mixed these tone-colors or conspicuously exhibited one of these splendid hues, keeping the others subordinate as an accompaniment.

We all know that light—perfectly white light—can be divided into the seven colors of the rainbow and that all the manifold and varied tints that we see in the world of nature—in sky and earth and sea—in every flower and every fleeting hue that falls upon it—comes from those seven colors. Now Bach and Handel and all the other composers who lived before Mozart had never thought of music as anything but white, so to speak. It was Mozart who broke up this white light into its prismatic hues. It was Mozart who brought the new _beauty of color into music_.

Although Mozart learned much from Haydn, Haydn learned more from Mozart. When Haydn wrote his first _Symphony_, Mozart was three years old. Mozart died while Haydn was enjoying his London triumphs. Haydn’s last _Symphonies_ show the influence of Mozart, though Haydn never reached Mozart’s glowing and brilliant color.

It is singular to remember that Mozart wrote his first Symphony only five years after Haydn wrote his first; but then Mozart was only eight years old! It was, however, a real symphony, in three movements and scored for the usual Orchestra of two violins, viola, bass (violoncello), two oboes and two horns.

Mozart had a very great advantage over Haydn in having heard so much music and so many different Orchestras. At this time there were a great many fine Orchestras in Europe and Mozart heard them all. Particularly notable was that of Mannheim, where Mozart first heard clarinets. “Oh, if we only had clarinets!” he wrote home in 1778. “You cannot think what a splendid effect a symphony makes with flutes, oboes and clarinets!”

The Mannheim Orchestra was generally considered the best in Europe, though some critics thought those of Munich and Vienna were better.

“The excellence of the Mannheim Orchestra—whose performances excited as much admiration among contemporaries as those of the Paris Orchestra under Habeneck’s conductorship at a later date—gained for it the honor of taking a regular share in the Elector’s concerts. The Orchestra contained some of the first artists and _virtuosi_ of the day, such as Cannabich, Toeschi, Cramer, Stamitz and Fränzel among the violins, Wendling as a flute-player, Le Brun and Ramm as oboists, Ritter as bassoonist and Lang as horn-player. But its fame rested chiefly on the excellent discipline of the Orchestra, which, among so many first-rate artists, it was no easy task to maintain. The _Kapellmeister_ at the time of Mozart’s visit was Christian Cannabich (1731-1798), who had succeeded Stamitz in 1775. His compositions were, doubtless, overrated by his contemporaries; but he was admirable as a solo violinist and still better as an orchestral leader, besides being an excellent teacher. The majority of the violinists in the Mannheim Orchestra had issued from his school and to this was mainly owing the uniformity of their execution and delivery. Cannabich, who was more of an organizer than an originator, had experimented with every condition and device for producing instrumental effects and he laid special stress on technical perfection of execution in order to be certain of having good ensemble players.”[60]

Mozart had much to do in raising the standard of the Vienna Orchestra on his return home.

From this time forward the clarinet became conspicuous in Mozart’s compositions.

We get a glimpse of Mozart conducting in 1789 from Jahn. He was in Leipzig:

“At the rehearsal for this concert he took the _tempo_ of the first _Allegro_ of his symphony so fast that the Orchestra was very soon in hopeless confusion. Mozart stopped, told the players what was wrong and began again as fast as before, doing all he could to keep the Orchestra together and stamping the time with his foot so energetically that his steel shoe-buckle snapped in two. He laughed at this; and, as they still dragged, he began a third time. The musicians, now having become impatient, worked in desperation; and at last the movement went right. ‘It was not caprice;’ he explained afterwards to some musical friends, to whom he had been holding forth on the subject of too rapid _tempo_, ‘but I saw at once that most of the players were advanced in years and there would have been no end to the dragging if I had not worked them up into a rage so that they did their best out of pure spite.’ The rest of the symphony he took in moderate time; and after the song had been rehearsed he praised the accompaniment of the Orchestra and said it would be unnecessary to rehearse his concerto: ‘The parts are correctly written out, you play accurately and so do I.’ The result showed that his confidence was not misplaced.”

Mozart is interesting to us in many periods; but we like best to think of him as the tiny prodigy, who was caressed and admired by all the world and who wrote the most delightful, childish letters home inquiring if “Master Canary still sang in G-sharp” and sending “A thousand kisses to Miss Bimberl” (the dog). We like, too, the story of his first composition, as related by an eye-witness:

“Mozart’s father, returning from church one day with a friend, found his son aged five, busy writing.

“‘What are you doing there, my little boy?’ he asked.

“‘I am composing a concerto for the harpsichord, and have almost got to the end of the first part.’

“‘Let me see your fine scrawl.’

“‘No; I have not finished it yet.’

“The father, however, took the paper and showed his friend the sheet full of notes, which could hardly be deciphered for the blots of ink.

“The two friends at first laughed heartily at this scribbling; but after a little time when the father had looked at it with more attention, his eyes were fastened on the paper, and at length, overflowed with tears of joy and wonder.

“‘Look, my friend,’ he said, ‘look. Everything is composed according to rule. It is a pity that the piece cannot be made any use of; but it is too difficult. Nobody would be able to play it.’

“‘It is a concerto,’ replied his little son, ‘and must be studied until it can be played properly. This is the way it should be played.’”

This was the beginning of Mozart’s composition. He wrote no less than six hundred and thirty-six works!

And to his name we will add this tribute:

“I have always been one of the greatest admirers of Mozart and I shall remain so until my last breath,—Beethoven.”

When Mozart heard the boy Beethoven play during his first visit to Vienna in 1787 he said to his friends: “Pay attention to him he will make a noise in the world some day, or other.”

It seems strange to find an English musician writing the following just appreciation of Beethoven in 1818, while the great genius was still living:

“Beethoven’s genius seems to anticipate a future age. In one comprehensive view, he surveys all that science has hitherto produced, but regards it only as the basis of that superstructure which harmony is capable of raising. He measures the talents and resources of every preceding artist, and, as it were, collects into a focus their scattered rays. He discovers that Haydn and Mozart alone have followed nature, yet he explores the hidden treasures of harmony with a vigor superior to either. In sacred music he is pre-eminently great. The dark tone of his mind is in unison with that solemn style which the service of the church requires; and the gigantic harmony which he wields enables him to excite by sounds, a terror hitherto unknown.”

Yes; Beethoven had a dark nature; or, at least, dark clouds frequently floated across his mind. He had everything to make him morose. His life was exceptionally unhappy: he had an unfortunate love-affair; the nephew in whom he placed all his hopes disappointed him; and, finally, he became totally deaf.

“His whole life is like a stormy day. At the beginning—a fresh, clear morning, perhaps a languid breeze, scarcely a breath of air. But there is always in the still air a secret menace, a dark foreboding. Large shadows loom and pass; tragic rumblings; murmuring awesome silences—the furious gusts of the winds of the _Eroica_ and the _C-minor_.”[61]

Ludwig van Beethoven was of Flemish-Dutch origin as the “van” shows. He was, however, born in Bonn in 1770, his birthplace a bare attic. His father was a lazy tenor and his mother a servant. His childhood was most unhappy. Beethoven was marked for sorrow from his earliest years.

He was compelled to practise the violin and harpsichord by his good-for-nothing father, who made him earn his own living, and he soon lost his mother, whom he adored.

In 1787 he visited Vienna and had some lessons from Mozart. In 1788, when but seventeen, Beethoven was playing in the Orchestra of the Elector of Cologne at Bonn.

We get a good idea of what a fine German Orchestra was in 1791 from Charles Louis Junker, who described it in that year, and Beethoven, too, who was then twenty:

“The Elector remained a considerable time at Mergentheim and had some twenty of his band with him. I heard the most exquisite music and made the acquaintance of some first-rate artists.

“On the first day I heard the musical performance, which took place regularly while the Elector dined. There were two oboes, two clarinets, two flageolets, and two horns. These eight players may fairly be called masters in their art. Soon after the musical performance during dinner the play began. It was _King Theodor_, with music by Paisiello.

“The Orchestra was capital, the _piani_, _forti_ and _crescendi_ being exceedingly well observed. Herr Ries, the expert score-reader and player at sight, conducted with the violin. He is worthy of being placed beside Cannabich.[62] His firm, vigorous lead inspires every player with life and spirit.

“The arrangement of the Orchestra was such as I had not seen elsewhere, but I thought it very convenient. Herr Ries stood on a raised platform in the middle of the theatre, and close to the stage where he could be seen by everyone. Immediately below and behind him were a counter violinist and violoncellist; on his right were the first violins, with the second violins opposite them; behind the violins the violas, with the clarinets opposite; behind the violas the counter violin and violoncello; and, last of all, the trumpets. On the conductor’s left were the wind instruments; the oboes with the flageolets opposite and flutes and horns. It would be difficult to find an Orchestra where the violins and basses were so perfect.

“I also heard one of the greatest pianists—the dear, good Beethoven. I heard him improvise. In fact, I, myself, was asked to give him a theme. The greatness of this gentle man as a _virtuoso_ may, I think, be estimated by the almost inexhaustible wealth of his imagination, the skill of his execution and the thorough originality of his expression. I did not find him deficient in any of the attributes of a great artist. In addition to his fluent execution he is suggestive, expressive, telling—in a word he touches the heart, and he is as good in _adagio_ as in _allegro_. The clever artists of this Orchestra are his admirers one and all and listen intently when he plays. But he is modest and quite unassuming.

“The members of this band are, almost without exception in the prime of early manhood and well-educated. They have a splendid physique and, attired in the scarlet and gold uniform of the Prince, their appearance is very striking.

“We have perhaps been accustomed to regard the Electorate of Cologne as a dark land into which rays of enlightenment had never penetrated; but a visit to the Elector’s Court would soon alter this opinion. I found the members of the Orchestra men of very liberal and sound understanding.

“The Elector, the most humane and best of princes, is not only a performer, but an enthusiastic lover of music. At the concert I went to he was the most attentive listener present.”

Beethoven saw Haydn when the latter stopped in Bonn on his way to and from London. In 1792 Beethoven submitted a cantata to Haydn. Haydn praised it and encouraged Beethoven to go on with his studies. After a time the Elector sent Beethoven to Vienna, the main reason being that he should study with Haydn. One of his friends, on parting, advised him to “Labor assiduously and receive Mozart’s spirit from the hands of Haydn.”

Beethoven was then twenty-two. He never returned. Vienna was thenceforth his home.

Beethoven took lessons with Haydn for nearly two years and then went to another master, Albrechtsberger, a very strict contrapuntist, who took great pains with Beethoven but evidently did not think much of him, for he said to a friend: “Have nothing to do with Beethoven. He has learned nothing and will never do anything in decent style.”

Among Beethoven’s friends in Vienna were the Prince and Princess Lichnowsky, who had been patrons of Mozart. They supported a Quartet and an Orchestra and gave musical parties on a large scale. Their Friday evenings were famous.

Music in Vienna was at that time chiefly dependent upon the patronage of the wealthy; for concerts were not paying and they were usually organized for some benevolent purpose.

The Lichnowskys offered Beethoven a home in their palace and a yearly allowance. For ten years, or more, it was at Prince Lichnowsky’s house that almost all of Beethoven’s works were first performed.

He was free to come and go as he pleased and had plenty of time to study and compose. Here he had a great deal of pleasure with the famous Quartet, first known as the Schuppanzigh and afterwards as the Rasoumoffsky.

Notwithstanding his uncouth ways and his passionate temper, Beethoven was a favorite in Vienna society. Haydn called him the Grand Mogul and considered him more of a pianist than a composer.

[Illustration: BEETHOVEN

_By Lebronne_]

“His manner was often abrupt and even aggressive. Perhaps he sometimes appeared so when nothing was further from his intention. A man with the _C-minor Symphony_ ringing in his head might well be excused some forgetfulness of the smaller conventions.

“Hitherto Beethoven’s playing in Vienna had been restricted to the drawing-rooms of his personal friends. It was not till the year 1795 that the public whose curiosity must have been considerably excited by reports of the achievements of the young pianist from Bonn, had an opportunity of witnessing his powers. At the annual concert given at the Burg Theatre, for the benefit of the widows and orphans of musicians, the composer made his first public appearance. Salieri, as usual, conducted, and the programme included, besides an operetta composed by one of his pupils, a ‘Pianoforte Concerto in C-major by L. van Beethoven.’

“On this, as on several other occasions, Beethoven caused something like a panic among his friends by postponing the completion of his composition till the last moment. Two days before the date of the performance the Concerto was still in an unfinished state; one cause of the delay being an attack of the colic, a malady to which the composer was subject. Wegeler was at hand to doctor him as well as he could; and while Beethoven, working at high pressure, filled sheet after sheet of music-paper, they were passed over to four copyists who attended in the next room. Next day at rehearsal a fresh _contretemps_ arose. There was found to be a difference of half a tone between the pitch of the pianoforte and that of the other instruments. To save a general retuning Beethoven seated himself at the piano without hesitation, and played the whole Concerto in C-sharp—not an entirely unprecedented feat, but, nevertheless, one that gives an idea of his thorough mastery over technical difficulties.”[63]

In 1796 Beethoven visited Dresden, Leipzig and Berlin.

In 1800 he left the Lichnowsky house and took lodgings for himself. Thenceforward he spent his summers in the country. He was now deaf.

In 1803 Beethoven gave an important concert in the Theater-an-der-Wien, the programme consisting of the oratorio _The Mount of Olives_, the Piano Concerto in C-minor and the Second Symphony, which was dedicated to Prince Lichnowsky. The final rehearsal took place at eight o’clock in the morning. “A terrible rehearsal,” Ries[64] recorded, “and by half-past two everybody was tired out and more or less discontented. But the genial Lichnowsky, who was present from the beginning, had brought some huge baskets laden with meat, wine and bread-and-butter, and he was soon hard at work, pressing the good things upon each tired musician with both his friendly hands. After this all went well.”

“We are told that Beethoven’s attitude at the piano was perfectly quiet and dignified, with no approach to grimace except to bend down a little towards the keys as his deafness increased. This is remarkable because as a conductor his motions were most extravagant. At a _pianissimo_ he would crouch down so as to be hidden by the desk, and then as the _crescendo_ increased would gradually rise, beating all the time, until at the _fortissimo_ he would spring into the air with his arms extended as if wishing to float on the clouds. When, as was sometimes the case after he became deaf, he lost his place and these motions did not coincide with the music, the effect was very unfortunate, though not so unfortunate as it would have been had he himself been aware of the mistake. In the Orchestra, as at the piano, he was urgent in demanding expression, exact attention to _piano_ and _forte_ and the slightest shades of _nuance_ and to _tempo rubato_. Generally speaking, he was extremely courteous to the band, though there were now and then exceptions.”[65]

“Beethoven was short and thick-set, broad shouldered and of athletic build. A big face, ruddy in complexion—except towards the end of his life, when his color became sickly and yellow, especially in the winter after he had been remaining indoors far from the fields. He had a massive and rugged forehead, extremely black and extraordinarily thick hair through which it seemed the comb had never passed, for it was always very rumpled, veritable bristling ‘serpents of Medusa.’ His eyes shone with prodigious force. It was one of the chief things one noticed on first encountering him, but many were mistaken in their color. When they shone out in dark splendor from a sad and tragic visage, they generally appeared black; but they were usually a bluish gray. Small and very deep set, they flashed fiercely in moments of passion or warmth, and dilated in a peculiar way under the influence of inspiration, reflecting his thoughts with a marvellous exactness. Often they inclined upwards with a melancholy expression. His nose was short and broad with the nostrils of a lion; the mouth refined, with the lower lip somewhat prominent. He had very strong jaws, which would easily break nuts, and a large indentation in his chin imparted a curious irregularity to the face. ‘He had a charming smile,’ said Moscheles, ‘and in conversation a manner often lovable and inviting confidence; on the other hand his laugh was most disagreeable, loud, discordant and strident’—the laugh of a man unused to happiness. His usual expression was one of melancholy. Rellstab in 1825 said that he had to summon up all his courage to prevent himself from breaking into tears when he looked into Beethoven’s ‘tender eyes with their speaking sadness.’ Braun von Braunthal met him at an inn a year later. Beethoven was sitting in a corner with closed eyes, smoking a long pipe—a habit which grew on him more and more as he approached death. A friend spoke to him. He smiled sadly, drew from his pocket a little note-tablet, and in a thin voice which frequently sounded cracked notes, asked him to write down his request.

“His face would suddenly become transfigured, maybe in the access of sudden inspiration which seized him at random, even in the street, filling the passers-by with amazement, or it might be when great thoughts came to him suddenly when seated at the piano. The muscles of his face would stand out; his veins would swell; his wild eyes would become doubly terrible. His lips trembled, he had the manner of a wizard controlling the demons which he had invoked. A Shakespearean visage—King Lear, so Sir Julius Benedict described it.”[66]

Beethoven’s compositions are far too numerous to mention here. We shall only speak of the _Symphonies_.

Beethoven’s very first _Symphony_ showed he was master of the Orchestra.

The Orchestra left by Mozart and Haydn consisted of the four stringed instruments, two flutes, two oboes, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, kettledrums and, occasionally, two clarinets. Neither Mozart nor Haydn ever used trombones in their _Symphonies_. Haydn had used as an exceptional matter in his _Military Symphony_ a big drum, a triangle and cymbals.

The _First Symphony_ is written for two drums (in C and G), two trumpets, two horns, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, first and second violins, violas and basso. There are one flute and one clarinet more than Mozart used in his _Jupiter Symphony_. One flute only is used in the _Andante_.

Beethoven also for the first time in the history of the Orchestra tuned the kettledrums in the key of the dominant instead of in the key of the movement.

In the _Second Symphony_ the Orchestra is still the ordinary Haydn-Mozart Orchestra without trombones, but _with the addition of clarinets_.

In the _Eroica_ (the _Third_) _Symphony_ we find something new—_three horns_. It was, perhaps, the first appearance of three horns in the Orchestra. In passing, we may recall that in 1805 when Prince Lobkowitz was entertaining Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia at his castle in Bohemia, to honor his guest, who was a remarkable musician and connoisseur, Lobkowitz ordered a performance of the new _Eroica_, by his Orchestra which always attended him. When the _Symphony_ was finished Louis Ferdinand begged to have it repeated, and on the second performance begged to hear it again. “Certainly,” replied Lobkowitz, “only we must first give the Orchestra some supper!”

In the _Fourth Symphony_ only one flute is used. It is scored for two drums, two trumpets, two horns, one flute, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, first and second violins, violas, violoncello and double-bass.

This _Symphony_, lovely as it is, was severely criticised. No one was more satirical than Weber, who was then a young man. He wrote a sketch in which he imagined himself as seeing in a dream all the instruments of the Orchestra grouped around the violins. The double-bass speaks: “I have just come from the rehearsal of a Symphony by one of our newest composers; and though, as you know, I have a tolerably strong constitution, I could only just hold out. Five minutes more would have shattered my frame and burst the sinews of my body. I have been made to caper about like a wild goat and to turn myself into a mere fiddle to execute the no-ideas of Mr. Composer. I’d sooner be a dancing master’s kit at once.”

The first violoncello (bathed in perspiration) says that for his part he is too tired to speak, and can recollect nothing like the warming he has just had since he played in Cherubini’s last opera. The second violoncello is of the opinion that the _Symphony_ is a musical monstrosity, revolting alike to the nature of the instruments and the expression of thought and with no purpose but that of perpetually “showing-off.” The conductor enters and threatens if they are not quiet to make them play the _Eroica Symphony_; and then he makes a speech, telling the instruments that the time has gone by for clearness and force, spirit and fancy, works like those of Gluck and Haydn and Mozart; and that here is the latest Vienna recipe for a _Symphony_: “First a slow movement full of short, disjointed, unconnected ideas, at the rate of three or four notes per quarter of an hour; then a mysterious roll of the drum and passage of the violas, seasoned with the proper quantity of pauses and _ritardandos_; and to end all a furious _finale_, in which the only requisite is that there should be no ideas for the hearer to make out, but plenty of transitions from one key to another—on to the new note at once, never mind modulating—above all things, throw rules to the winds, for they only hamper a genius.”

“At this point,” says Weber, “I woke in a dreadful fright. I was on the road to become either a great composer, or a lunatic.”

The _Fifth Symphony_ is scored for two drums, two trumpets, two horns, two flutes, one flute piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, three trombones, first and second violins, violoncellos, basses and contra-fagotto (double-bassoon).

The piccolo, trombones and double-bassoon here make their first appearance in the symphonies. Beethoven had long known the double-bassoon, for there was one in the Orchestra of the Elector of Cologne.

The _C-minor Symphony_ is of all Beethoven’s works the most popular. It was the work that made him known to the whole world.

Berlioz tells an anecdote of how the _C-minor_ impressed Lesueur, one of Berlioz’s masters, at the Paris Conservatoire when it was first played in Paris. “After the performance,” Berlioz says, “I hurried to see the effect the work had had upon him and to hear his judgment on it. I found him in the passage, red as fire and walking furiously fast. ‘Well, my dear master,’ said I—

“‘Ouf!’ was his reply, ‘I must get out into the air. It is astonishing, wonderful. It has excited and overcome me so that in trying to put my hat on I could hardly find my head. Don’t stop me now, but come to me to-morrow.’

“Early next morning I called on him and we at once rushed into the subject. At length I succeeded in making him repeat the confession of his emotion at the performance, but then with a violent shake of his head and a peculiar smile he said: ‘All the same, such music as that ought not to be made.’ To which I answered: ‘All right, dear master, there’s no fear of much being made like it.’”

The _Pastoral Symphony_ (the _Sixth_) calls for two flutes, one piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two horns, two bassoons, two trumpets, two drums, alto and tenor trombones, first and second violins, viola, violoncellos and basses. The trumpets and trombones are used in the _Storm_ only (fourth movement). In the _Andante_ (second movement) there are two solo violoncellos (with _sordini_); the other violoncellos play with the double-basses.

The _Seventh Symphony_ is composed for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, two drums, first and second violins, viola, violoncello and double-basses. The drums are tuned in E and A except in the _Scherzo_, where they are tuned in F and A.

This _Symphony_ was first performed in the University of Vienna at a concert for the benefit of soldiers wounded at the Battle of Hanau (Oct. 30, 1813), where the Austrians and Bavarians tried to cut off Napoleon’s retreat from Leipzig.

Beethoven conducted. Some of the most famous musicians and composers played in the Orchestra. There was Schuppanzigh, Romberg, Spohr, Mayseder and the famous double-bass, Dragonetti (see page 70); Meyerbeer and Hummel played the kettledrums; Moscheles, the cymbals and old Salieri “gave time to the drums and salvos,” says a contemporary, who continued:

“At this concert I first saw Beethoven conduct. Often as I had heard of it, it surprised me extremely. He was accustomed to convey the marks of expression to the Orchestra by the most peculiar motions of his body. Thus at a _sforzando_ he tore his arms, which were before crossed on his breast, violently apart. At a _piano_ he crouched down, bending lower the softer the tone. At the _crescendo_ he raised himself by degrees until at the _forte_ he sprang up to his full height; and without knowing it would often at the same time shout aloud.”

The _Eighth Symphony_ has two drums in F and C, two trumpets in F, two horns in F, two flutes, two clarinets, two oboes, two bassoons, first and second violins, violas, violoncello and double-bass. In the Finale the drums are for the first time tuned in octaves. It was first performed in the Great Redoutensaal, Vienna, on Feb. 27, 1814. The Seventh Symphony was also on the programme and received the most applause.

There is a tremendous gap between the _Eighth_ and the _Ninth Symphonies_. Even Beethoven, Titan that he was and with an orchestra that had developed marvellously under his magic hands, felt that instruments were not sufficient to express the ultimate climax of this mighty work, and, therefore, added human voices to swell the joyous uproar of the last movement. The _Ninth_ was first performed at the Kärnthnerthor Theatre, Vienna, May 7, 1824. The house was crowded. All the principal musicians, professional and amateur, were present. “In a letter to Schindler, quoted by Lenz, he calls the day _Fracktag_, because he had the bore of putting on a smarter coat than usual. On this occasion it was a green coat, and he probably also wore a three-cornered cocked hat. The preparations had somewhat upset him, and his dress had to be discussed with Schindler in one of the conversation-books. His deafness had by this time become total, but that did not keep him out of the Orchestra. He stood by the side of Umlauf, the conductor, to indicate the times of the various movements. The house was tolerably full, though not crowded, and his reception was all that his warmest friends could desire. To use Schindler’s expression it was more than Imperial. Three successive bursts of applause were the rule for the Imperial Family and he had _five_! After the fifth, the Commissary of Police interfered and called for silence! Beethoven acknowledged the applause by a bow. The Scherzo was so completely interrupted—at the _Ritmo di tre battute_, where the drums give the motif—that it had to be begun again. A great deal of emotion was naturally enough visible in the Orchestra; and we hear of such eminent players as Mayseder and Böhm even weeping.

“At the close of the performance an incident occurred which must have brought the tears to many an eye in the room. The master, though placed in the midst of this confluence of music, heard nothing of it at all and was not even sensible of the applause of the audience at the end of his great work, but continued standing with his back to the audience and beating the time, till Fräulein Ungher, who had sung the contralto part, turned him, or induced him to turn round and face the people, who were still clapping their hands and giving way to the greatest demonstrations of pleasure. His turning round and the sudden conviction thereby forced on everybody that he had not done so before because he could not hear what was going on, acted like an electric shock on all present, and a volcanic explosion of sympathy and admiration followed, which was repeated again and again and it seemed as if it would never end.”[67]

The score comprises two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, two drums, first and second violins, violas, violoncellos and basses. In some of the movements three trombones, a double bassoon, a piccolo, triangle, cymbals and big drum are called for.

“These great works he did as no one ever did and probably no one ever will. But of orchestral music he wrote no more after the _Ninth Symphony_. Music will advance in richness, scope and difficulty; but such music as Beethoven’s great instrumental works, in which thought, emotion, melody and romance combine with extraordinary judgment and common sense and a truly wonderful industry to make a perfect whole, can hardly any more be written. The time for such an event, such a concurrence of the man and the circumstances will not again arrive. There can never be a second Beethoven, or a second Shakespeare. However much Orchestras may improve and execution increase, Beethoven’s _Symphonies_ will always remain at the head of music as Shakespeare’s plays are at the head of the literature of the modern world—‘Age cannot wither them, nor custom stale their infinite variety.’”[68]

In every way possible Beethoven discovered and brought forward the capacities of each individual instrument. Each instrument in the Orchestra was enriched under Beethoven’s touch and given a new standing, a new dignity. The viola, the violoncello, the double-bass, the horn, the trombone and the kettledrum were all brought forward and turned into solo instruments. The clarinet, too, became firmly established as a leading voice.

No composer before him had ever _made the instruments converse_ as did Beethoven. No composer had ever made the strings so flexible, so humorous, so pathetic, so gay, so languorous. Besides, Beethoven was the first to take the violins up into the highest register—into the ethereal domain where Wagner followed.

“When an idea comes to me,” said Beethoven, “I hear it on an instrument, never on a voice.”

“Beethoven is the prophet of the new era which the Nineteenth Century ushered in for mankind. As things must be _felt_ before they can be acted out, so they must be expressed in the indefinite emotional forms of music before they can be uttered and definitely imaged forth in words or pictorial shapes. Beethoven is the forerunner of Shelley and Whitman among the poets, of J. W. Turner and J. F. Millet among the painters. He is the great poet who holds Nature by the one hand and Man by the other. Within that low-statured, rudely outlined figure which a century ago walked hatless through the fields near Mödling or sat oblivious in some shabby restaurant at Vienna, dwelt an emotional giant—a being who—through his outer life by deafness, disease, business-worries, poverty, was shattered as it were into a thousand squalid fragments—in his great heart embraced all mankind, with piercing insight penetrated intellectually through all falsehoods to the truth and already in his art-work gave outline to the religious, the human, the democratic yearnings, the loves, the comradeship, the daring individualities, and all the heights and depths of feeling of a new dawning era of society. He was, in fact, and he gave utterance to, a new type of man. What that struggle must have been between his inner and outer conditions—of his real self with the lonely and mean surroundings in which it was embodied—we only know through his music.”[69]

Beethoven was the last great Classical composer.

With Weber we enter a new school of music—the Romantic; and Carl Maria von Weber stands at the head of this Romantic School.

The word _Classical_ is used in two ways: one, to define old works which have held their place in general estimation for a long time; and the other to describe works, written according to strict ideas of form, usually in the Sonata and Symphonic style. The great classical masters are Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. The word _Romantic_ is used to define the works of the composers who came directly after the Classical composers and who wished to write in freer form, permitting more play for the imagination.

The great Romantics are Weber, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann and Chopin.

“Widely as the composers of this new school differed in other respects, they were alike in their susceptibility to the tone of thought and feeling which so deeply colored the romantic literature of their time. None of them were strangers to that weariness, approaching to disgust, of the actual world around them and those yearnings to escape from it which pursued so many of the finest minds of the generation to which they belonged. To such men it was a relief and delight to live in an ideal world as remote as possible from the real one.

[Illustration: C. M. VON WEBER

_By Schimon_]

“Some took refuge in mediæval legends, where no border divided the natural from the supernatural one; some, in the charms and solitudes of nature; and others in the contemplation of peace and beatitude beyond the grave.”[70]

Of all the German musicians of the Nineteenth Century none exercised a greater influence than Weber. “The historian of German music in the Nineteenth Century will have to make Weber his starting-point. His influence was even greater than that of Beethoven, for deeply imbued though Beethoven was with the modern spirit of that time, he adhered as a rule to the traditions of the Eighteenth Century. These Weber casts aside and starts after fresh ideals. He was far less perfect in form than Beethoven, nor was he his equal in power; but in originality he has never been surpassed by any musician, ancient or modern. The germs of life he scattered broadcast; and the whole of German Opera down to Wagner’s latest works is evolved from Weber’s spirit. Even the concert-music of other masters such as Mendelssohn and Schumann profited by his suggestiveness. Without Weber Mendelssohn’s _Midsummer Night’s Dream Music_, _Walpurgis Nacht_, _Concert-Overtures_ and _Pianoforte Concertos_; Schumann’s _Paradise and the Peri_, _Pilgrimage of the Rose_ and concert-ballads; the entire variation music of the present day; choruses for men’s voices; certain forms of the German _Lied_; even the modern technique of pianoforte playing; and, most of all, the _present development of orchestration are inconceivable_.”[71]

Weber, like Bach, came of a musical family; but, unlike most of the great composers who had, heretofore appeared, Weber was of noble ancestry.

Weber was a cultivated man of the world as well as a musician. His birth gave him a place in the best society and his cultivation, which was learned from men rather than books—he lived a wandering life in his youth—was wide and embraced literature and several arts.

Carl Maria von Weber was born in Vienna in 1786. He was a delicate, nervous child whose health was not improved by his father’s desire to make him a musical prodigy like Mozart, of whom he was a cousin. Weber was sadly overtaxed. Among his masters were Michael Haydn, brother of the great Haydn, and the Abbé Vogler, a fashionable composer and organist of Vienna and a man of wit, culture and social position. By 1810, when his true musical life may be said to begin, Weber had brought out several operas. In Mannheim he produced his first _Symphony_. In 1811 he started on his tour through Germany and Switzerland, at first alone and then in company with Baermann, the celebrated clarinet-player. Weber’s visit to Berlin in 1812 was very important. After many concert-tours Weber became conductor of the theatre in Prague. In 1816 the King of Saxony called him to Dresden.

It is interesting to catch a glimpse of Weber on his first appearance as _Kapellmeister_ here, as related by his son:

“After a few words of pleasant and friendly greeting and assurances of his goodwill and interest to all, he terminated with the astounding declaration: ‘In return I expect explicit obedience. I shall be just but pitilessly severe with all who need severity, myself among the number.’ Such expressions had never before been heard by any of the company. For many generations gentle wishes, not commands, had been the order of the day. At first all stood aghast and dumb. On leaving the theatre at least two-thirds of the company declared themselves against the ‘impertinent young musical director.’ The members of the Orchestra were all indignant. Never had the most celebrated of _kapellmeisters_ ever dared to address this celebrated Orchestra. And yet, in a short time, some of the bitterest enemies of this hour became Weber’s staunchest friends, supporters and admirers.

“There are still living many old members of the Dresden Orchestra who can remember the appearance of Weber on this memorable occasion. He stood before them a little, narrow-chested man, with long arms and a thin, pale face, from which his eyes gleamed forth in lightning flashes through his spectacles. When he was pleased a smile, which was positively enchanting, played over his otherwise serious mouth. When affected by the occurrences of the moment, he bent his head gently sideways with an air of peculiar tenderness and earnestness. He wore a blue frock coat with metal buttons, tight pantaloons and Hessian boots with tassels. A scrupulously clean white cravat with embroidered ends, in which was stuck a handsome diamond pin, encircled his neck. Over all he carried a tawny colored cloak with several capes, a broad round hat on his head. Nothing in his whole attire indicated any artistic pretension or affectation; and, in the streets, or in a room, he might have been easily overlooked. Once noticed, however, Weber was sure to charm and captivate by his air of intellectual refinement and elegance of manner.”

_Der Freischütz_ was performed in Berlin in 1821; _Euryanthe_ in Vienna in 1823; and _Oberon_ in London in 1826, the year of Weber’s death.

Though Weber’s works for the Orchestra are comparatively unimportant, the instrumentation of his operas, so dramatic, so original and so poetic, has had great effect on modern orchestral writers.

Weber’s instrumentation was founded on Beethoven’s. He introduced no new instruments. What he did _was to develop the woodwind and make new and lovely combinations_. For the clarinet he had a special fondness.

After Mozart introduced the clarinet into the Orchestra, it rapidly became a favorite solo-instrument. At the beginning of the Nineteenth Century Germany had two splendid clarinet-players,—Hermstedt of Sondershausen, for whom Spohr composed, and Baermann of Munich, with whom Weber gave concerts, as we have seen,[72] and wrote special music. Weber learned much from the latter about the resources of this instrument; and Weber is the composer, _par excellence_, of the clarinet.

Next to the clarinet, Weber loved the horns. He made them most poetic. With Beethoven four horns and three trombones had been exceptional. With Weber this number became the rule.

Weber was also fond of subdividing the violins.

“As an interpreter of nature Weber’s position in the dramatic world is like that of Beethoven in the Symphony. Nobody has ever depicted with the same truth as he a sultry moonlight night the stillness broken only by the nightingale’s trill and the solemn murmur of the trees, as in Agathe’s grand _scene_ in _Der Freischütz_; or a gruesome night scene in the gloomy forest ravine such as that in the Finale of the 2d Act. With this descriptive faculty went hand in hand consummate skill in orchestration. There is something original and intoxicating in the sound he brings out of the Orchestra, a complete simplicity combined with perfect novelty. He was able, as it were, to _transport himself into the soul of the instruments_ and make them talk to us like human beings, each in its own language, each speaking when it alone has power to lay bare the very heart of the action.

“The phrase ‘local coloring’ in music may be defined as that which conjures up before our minds the associations connected with certain scenes, races and epochs. In the _Freischütz_ the prevailing color was derived from the life of the German foresters and huntsmen; in _Preciosa_ we have the charm of the south in lovely Spain, then the type of all that was romantic, with the picturesque life of the roving gipsy. _Euryanthe_ takes us back to the Middle Ages and the palmy days of French chivalry which reappear to some extent in _Oberon_ mingled with scenes from Oriental life and from fairyland. Weber’s melody, the chords of his harmony, the figures employed, the effects of color so totally unexpected—all combine to waft us with mysterious power into an unknown land.”[73]

Schubert’s gift to the Orchestra was his _novel way of writing for the trombones and for his use of the woodwind_. He gave a conversational treatment of oboe, flute and clarinet. This does not mean to say that he did not also write beautifully for the strings.

No composer ever lived more entirely in his music than Schubert. There is not much to say about his life. He was born in Vienna; he lived there all his life; and he died there at the age of thirty-one. He earned a scanty living; he found it hard to get his compositions published; he had no wealthy patrons like Handel, Haydn, Gluck, Mozart and Beethoven; he had no pleasures, no triumphs such as Weber and Mendelssohn enjoyed. Schubert’s life was dull and commonplace. Yet between the years of his birth and death—1797-1828—he produced an astounding number of works. He wrote 650 songs (the extraordinary _Erl-King_ when he was only eighteen), ten _Symphonies_ (of which the eighth is the _Unfinished_), many operettas, piano-music and a great deal of orchestral and chamber-music and compositions for special instruments.

Salieri, the old rival of Mozart, was the first to recognize Schubert’s genius. “He can do everything,” he exclaimed, “he is a genius. He composes songs, masses, operas, quartets—whatever you can think of.” In 1822 Schubert met both Beethoven and Weber. Beethoven he adored. Schubert was a singer, violinist and pianist.

[Illustration: SCHUBERT

_By Rieder_]

Schubert’s first _Symphony in D_ is dated 1813; the _Second in B-flat_ is dated 1814; the _Third in D_, in 1815; the _Fourth in C-minor_ (described by the composer as “the Tragic”) is dated 1816; and scored for two violins, viola, violoncello and bass, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets and drums.

The _Fifth Symphony_, known as the “Symphony without trumpets and drums,” is scored for two violins, viola, violoncello, double-bass, flute, two oboes, two bassoons and two horns. It is dated 1816. Up to this point Schubert’s _Symphonies_ show the influence of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. Now came the true Schubert style with the _Sixth_, _the C-major Symphony_, which is regarded as Schubert’s masterpiece. It is scored for two violins, viola, violoncello and double-bass; two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, and drums. This work was first performed in Vienna in 1828, but it was not heard in Paris and London until 1856. In 1842 Habeneck rehearsed it in Paris, but the Orchestra refused to play it; and when Mendelssohn put it into rehearsal in London the Philharmonic Orchestra laughed at the triplets in the last movement, and Mendelssohn, very indignant, withdrew it. Sir Augustus Manns, who introduced the work in England in 1856, remembers hearing at the end of the first movement the principal horn call out to one of the first violins: “Tom, have you been able to discover a tune yet?” “I have not,” was Tom’s reply.

The _B-minor_, the _Unfinished_, was written in 1822, before the _C-major_. The _Unfinished_ we may note, was composed before Beethoven’s _Ninth_ and the _C-major Symphony_ after it.

Perhaps Mendelssohn’s most characteristic orchestral work is to be found in the _Midsummer Night’s Dream_ music, the oratorio of _Elijah_ and the Overture to _Melusine_. Of course, his Symphonies—the _Reformation_, which appeared in 1830, two years after Schubert’s _C-major_, the _Italian_ in 1831 and the _Scotch_ in 1842, contain beautiful work especially for the woodwind.

With his suave, graceful, sunny and charming melodies, it was only natural that Mendelssohn’s instrumentation should be delicate.

In the world of pictures we often turn from the deep, rich colors of Titian, Rembrandt and Velasquez to enjoy the softer hues of Chardin, Watteau and Fragonard. It is the same in music. Refreshing it is to turn from the dark, heavy colors of Beethoven, or the glowing hues of Weber and Wagner to the opalescent tints of delightful, fanciful, poetic Mendelssohn.

Mendelssohn’s life was happy from beginning to end; and this joy bubbles up in his music. The world gave him much; and he gave the world much in return.

Born in Hamburg in 1809, he spent his early years in Berlin, where his family removed. He had a childhood almost unparalleled in the annals of music for happiness. He conducted a little Orchestra in his father’s house every Sunday morning, where many of his early compositions were performed, among them the Overture to the _Midsummer Night’s Dream_, which he wrote when he was only seventeen. As pianist, organist, conductor and composer, Mendelssohn had one triumph after another. He made nine visits to London, where he stood next to Handel in popular affection.

In 1835 he became conductor of the Gewandhaus concerts in Leipzig and he established the Conservatory of Music in that city. He died in Leipzig in 1847.

Mendelssohn has suffered somewhat from the high position the English have given him in music; but he has a place that is quite his own. He followed in the footsteps of Weber rather than in those of Beethoven; and, though he has no tragic depths, he has given the world lyric compositions of great beauty and the greatest oratorios since Handel’s.

Mendelssohn sketched and painted well; he had a love for literature; he wrote charming letters; and he was altogether a delightful person.

Mendelssohn’s orchestration is noted for _its perfect balance, its clarity and its polish_. He seems to have cared less for the brass than the other groups. His violin concerto, ranking next to Beethoven’s, shows his sympathy for the violin. The viola is also well treated in all his works. The violoncello _obbligato_ in the accompaniment to the solo “It is enough” in _Elijah_ proves that this instrument was a favorite. The clarinet passages in the _Overture to Melusine_ and the use of the horns in the _Notturno_ in _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_ exhibit his poetic and romantic touch in the highest degree.

Many persons have left snap-shots of happy Mendelssohn, Sir Julius Benedict, a pupil of his, wrote enthusiastically: “It would be a matter of difficulty to decide in what quality Mendelssohn excelled the most,—whether as composer, pianist, organist, or conductor of an Orchestra. Nobody, certainly, ever knew better how to communicate—as if by an electric fluid—his own conception of a work to a large body of performers. It was highly interesting, on such an occasion, to contemplate the anxious attention manifested by a body of sometimes more than five hundred singers and performers, watching every glance of Mendelssohn’s eye and following, like obedient spirits, the magic wand of this musical Prospero. Once, while conducting a rehearsal of Beethoven’s _Eighth Symphony_, the admirable Allegretto in B-flat, not going at first to his liking, he remarked, smilingly that he knew every one of the gentlemen engaged was capable of performing and even composing a scherzo of his own, but that _just now_ he wanted to hear Beethoven’s, which he thought had some merits. It was cheerfully repeated. ‘Beautiful! Charming!’ cried Mendelssohn, ‘but still too loud in two or three instances. Let us take it again from the middle.’ ‘No, no,’ was the general reply of the band, ‘the whole piece over again, for our satisfaction;’ and then they played it with the utmost delicacy and finish, Mendelssohn laying aside his _bâton_ and listening with evident delight to the perfect execution. ‘What would I have given,’ he exclaimed, ‘if Beethoven could have heard his own composition so well understood and so magnificently performed.’”

[Illustration: MENDELSSOHN

_By Bendemann_]

Another admirer wrote: “When once his fine, firm hand grasped the _bâton_, the electric fire of Mendelssohn’s nature seemed to stream out through it and be felt at once by singers, orchestra and audience. Mendelssohn conducted not only with his _bâton_, but with his whole body. At the outset, when he took his place at the music-stand, his countenance was wrapped in deep and almost solemn earnestness. You could see at a glance that the temple of music was a holy place to him. As soon as he had given the first beat, his face lighted up, every feature was aflame and the play of countenance was the best commentary on the piece. Often the spectator could anticipate from his face what was to come. The _fortes_ and _crescendos_ he accompanied with an energetic play of features and the most forcible action; while the _decrescendos_ and _pianos_ he used to modulate with a motion of both hands till they slowly sank to almost perfect silence. He glanced at the most distant performers when they should strike in, and often designated the instant when they should pause, by a characteristic movement of the hand, which will not be forgotten by those who ever saw it.”

Contemporary with Mendelssohn, though they seem much nearer to us than he, are three great geniuses of the Nineteenth Century,—Berlioz, Liszt and Wagner. Though all three were admirers of the Classic masters, they formed an entirely new school of music, which was called “The Music of the Future.”

It is hard to say to which of these men Music owes the most; for while Wagner was certainly the greatest composer, Berlioz daringly led the way into these new regions where Wagner followed, and Liszt, with his extraordinary influence, his generosity of spirit, his untiring zeal in producing Wagner’s works as well as his lavish gifts to Wagner in times of trouble, was not the least important of the three in making Music what it is to-day. Moreover, Liszt’s own compositions helped to establish in the affections of the public this Music of the Future that became the Music of the Present and that is rapidly taking its place in the Music of the Past ranking as Classic in the first meaning of the word (see page 232).

To understand how Music departed from the old roads and took a new path, we must remember that in 1830 with the Revolution that sent Charles IX from the French throne, a new spirit came into the world of literature, art and music. It is known as the Romantic Movement. Writers and painters, full of the excitement of the period and joy at the triumph of republican ideas, sought to portray nature and human nature in truer lines and colors than the traditional rules and measurements of the Classic period.

There was a great outburst of literature in France—Gautier, Flaubert, de Musset, de Vigny and Victor Hugo are a few of the names that rise to one’s lips when the Romantic Movement is mentioned. Painters, too, were numerous. There was but one French composer—Berlioz. Just what Victor Hugo expressed in literature, just what Delacroix expressed in painting, Berlioz expressed in music; and Berlioz stands alone, a solitary figure.

“Berlioz’s early influences were as much literary as musical. His reading was mainly romantic; his musical gods were Beethoven, Weber and Gluck, whose orchestral writings influenced him most. He knew little of Beethoven’s piano writings and did not like Bach. Into the intellectual world of the Beethoven symphony and the operas of Gluck and Weber, he breathed the newer, more nervous life of the French Romanticists. _Color and sensation_ became as important as form and the pure idea. These influences and his literary instincts led him to graft the programme form on the older symphony. All his music aims at something concrete. Instead of the abstract world of the classical symphonists he gives us definite emotions, or paints definite scenes. His own words: ‘I have taken up music where Beethoven left it’ indicate his position. He is the real beginner of that interpenetration of music and the poetic idea which has transformed modern art.”[74]

Berlioz’s temperament was like a volcano bursting continually into fire and flame and his mind took delight in everything of enormous magnitude. He loved to think of the Pyramids of Egypt, of huge lonely mountains, of great seas, the bursting of thunderbolts and the howl of tempests. Everything with him appeared in colossal proportions; and, consequently, much of his music seemed to the people of his time, even more than to us to-day, to have been written for the ears of giants and Titans and not for men and women of ordinary build.

Heine appreciated this phase of the extravagant Berlioz. “A colossal nightingale, a lark the size of an eagle,” he wrote of him, “such as once existed in the primæval world. Yes, the music of Berlioz, in general seems to me primitive almost antediluvian; it sets me dreaming of gigantic species of extinct animals, of mammoths, of fabulous empires with fabulous sins, of all kinds of impossibilities piled one on top of the other. These magic accents recall to us Babylon, the hanging-gardens of Semiramis, the marvels of Nineveh, the audacious edifices of Mizraim such as are shown in the pictures of the English painter Martin.”

This is all true, but it represents only one side of Berlioz.

Berlioz could be exquisite and dainty as well as colossal and terrific, as we hear in the _Queen Mab Scherzo_ from the _Roméo et Juliette Symphony_, and the _Dance of the Sylphs_ from the _Damnation of Faust_.

Berlioz is called the “Father of Modern Orchestration.” To appreciate the magnitude of his work, we must forget all our modern music for a moment and remember what the Orchestra was like when Berlioz, a country boy of eighteen, arrived in Paris in 1821.

[Illustration: BERLIOZ

_By Fischer_]

Berlioz “is one of the most remarkable phenomena in the history of music. In his earliest years, as in his latest, Berlioz was himself, a solitary figure, owing practically nothing to other people’s music, an artist we may say, without ancestry and without posterity. Mozart builds upon Haydn and influences Beethoven; Beethoven imitates Mozart and in turn influences the practice of all later symphonists; Wagner learns from Weber and gives birth to a host of imitators. But with Berlioz—and it is a point to be insisted on—there is no one whose speech he tried to copy in his early years and there is no one since who speaks with _his_ voice. How many things in the early Beethoven were made in the factory of Mozart! How many times does the early Wagner speak with the voice of Weber! But who can turn over the scores of Berlioz’s early works and find a single phrase that can be fathered upon any previous, or contemporary, writer? There was never any one, before his time or since, who thought and wrote just like him; his musical style especially is absolutely his own. Now and then in _L’Enfance du Christ_ he suggests Gluck—not in the turn of his phrases but in the general atmosphere of an aria; but apart from this it is the rarest thing for him to remind us of any other composer. His melody, his harmony, his rhythm, are absolutely his own.”[75]

In nothing did the originality of Berlioz show itself more strikingly than in his treatment of the Orchestra.

So many of his ideas and effects were used, and carried still further, by Wagner that some of the richness and beauty of tone of the modern Orchestra that we usually give to Wagner belongs rightfully to Hector Berlioz. For instance, Berlioz discovered the value of _pianissimo_ brass effects; he discovered the ethereal charm of harmonies on divided violins; he discovered the true worth of the viola; he introduced the harp into the Symphony Orchestra; he grouped instruments into families and got from them rich chords in different shades of the same tone-color; he advocated the tuba as a substitution for the coarser ophicleide; he made many experiments with the kettledrums and other instruments of percussion; he divided the strings into many parts (one of his scores calls for five double-basses); and he also advocated the sunken and hidden Orchestra, which Wagner realized in his theatre of Bayreuth.

Wagner frankly confesses his debt to this French genius. “Berlioz was diabolically clever,” he wrote: “I made a minute study of his instrumentation as early as 1840 in Paris and I have often taken up his scores since. I profited greatly both as regards what to do and what to leave undone.”

It is absurd to say that without Berlioz there would have been no Wagner; but it is no exaggeration to say that without Berlioz there might have been a Wagner very different from the one we know.

“Berlioz’s startling originality as a musician rests upon a physical and mental organization very different from, and in some respects superior to, that of other eminent masters,—a most ardent nervous temperament; a gorgeous imagination, incessantly active, heated at times to the verge of insanity; an abnormally subtle and acute sense of hearing; the keenest intellect, of a disserting analyzing turn; the most violent will, manifesting itself in a spirit of enterprise and daring equalled only by its tenacity of purpose and indefatigable perseverance.

“From a technical point of view certain of Berlioz’s attainments are phenomenal. The gigantic proportions, the grandiose style, the imposing weight of those long and broad harmonic and rhythmical progressions towards some end afar off, the exceptional means employed for exceptional ends—in a word, the colossal cyclopean aspect of certain movements are without parallel in musical art.

“The originality and inexhaustible variety of rhythms and the surpassing perfection of his instrumentation are points willingly conceded by Berlioz’s staunchest opponents. As far as the technique of instrumentation is concerned, it may truly be asserted that he treats the Orchestra with the same supreme daring and absolute mastery with which Paganini treated the violin and Liszt the pianoforte. No one before him had so clearly realized the individuality of each particular instrument, its resources and capabilities. In his works the equation between a particular phrase and a particular instrument is invariably perfect; and over and above this, his experiments in orchestral color, his combination of single instruments with others so as to form groups, and again his combination of several separate groups of instruments with one another are as novel and as beautiful as they are uniformly successful.”[76]

Berlioz wrote a _Treatise on Instrumentation_, which he curiously numbered among his works as opus 10.

Hector Berlioz was born in La Cote Saint-André, near Grenoble, in 1803, and died in Paris in 1869. His father, Dr. Louis Berlioz, wanted him to be a physician and sent him to Paris at the age of eighteen to study medicine. But medicine was against his will, and it was not long before Berlioz abandoned these studies and entered the Paris Conservatory as a pupil of Lesueur. Soon his parents stopped his allowance; and the young man was forced to earn his living by singing in the chorus of an obscure theatre. He was not popular in the Conservatory: his character and his genius were too original. However, in 1830 he obtained the _prix de Rome_, that envied purse enabling the winner to study in Italy. On returning to Paris, he earned his living by his pen—he was a brilliant journalist—and gave concerts of his works as he finished their composition.

His monster concerts and the huge Orchestra he required were subject to ridicule and caricature. The comic papers were full of illustrated jokes at his expense.

“I am so sorry to hear that your husband has become deaf. How did it happen?” one sympathetic lady says to a friend, who replies, “Well, you see he _would_ go to that last concert of Berlioz!”

Another picture shows two street venders looking at one of their tribe flaunting a rich dress. “How did she become so rich?” one asks the other; and the latter explains: “Why, she sells cotton at the door of Berlioz’s concerts for people to stuff in their ears!”

Berlioz’s symphony _Harold in Italy_, written in 1834, at Paganini’s request for a solo part in which he could exhibit his fine Stradivari viola, attracted some attention when it was performed at the Conservatory. His dramatic symphony _Roméo et Juliette_, performed at the Conservatory in 1839, won him fresh laurels. It was dedicated to Paganini, who having heard the _Fantastic Symphony_ and _Harold in Italy_ given under Berlioz’s direction at a concert in Paris in 1838, dropped on his knees before the composer, kissed his hand and the next day sent him a cheque for twenty thousand francs ($4,000). Berlioz spent much time polishing this score; and of all his compositions he preferred the _Adagio_ (love scene) of _Roméo et Juliette Symphony_.

Berlioz’s life was comparatively uneventful. His operas, _Benvenuto Cellini_ and _Béatrice et Bénédict_ (_Much Ado about Nothing_) and his two works on the Trojan War were unsuccessful. His gigantic works such as the _Damnation of Faust_ and _Requiem_ were also failures. His success was gained outside of his beloved Paris in 1843 and 1847, when he gave concerts in Germany and Russia. His extraordinary reception amazed his own countrymen, with whom Berlioz was never popular.

In 1852 he became Librarian at the Paris Conservatory. France gave him the cross of the Legion of Honor and other countries bestowed decorations upon him.

“Liszt was at first a pianist, the most extraordinary and fascinating ever known, and one of the most wonderful of improvisators. Yielding to the taste of the time, he composed _Fantasias_, arrangements, or paraphrases, upon fashionable operas, bristling with difficulties of execution so extreme that no one but himself could attempt to play them.

“It was not until a later period that he began really to compose and then he brought into his work the quality of mysticism which was in his own nature.”[77]

Franz Liszt (1811-1886), is another phenomenon in musical history. He was great as a pianist, great as a composer, great as a conductor, great as a man, great as a friend. In looking over his life it seems incredible that any man could have accomplished so much and in so many varied directions.

All the good fairies of fortune presided over his career from his earliest hours. He was born at Raiding in Hungary, in 1811, the son of Adam Liszt, an official in the Imperial service of Prince Nicolaus Esterhazy (the patron of Haydn) and amateur musician, who taught his son so well that at the age of nine years he appeared at a concert in Œdenburg. Soon afterwards several Hungarian noblemen subscribed a sum to provide for his education for six years. Young Franz studied with Czerny and Salieri (Mozart’s rival) in Vienna and in 1823 played before Beethoven, who embraced him on the stage. In that year “the little Liszt” was taken to Paris by his father and there he had the best instruction. After the death of his father in 1827, he supported himself and his mother in Paris, by teaching and giving concerts.

He lived in Paris in the early days of the Romantic Movement[78] and was brought into relation with all the great artists, writers, poets and musicians of the day. Paganini’s magical playing inspired in him the ambition to do for the pianoforte what Paganini had done for the violin. How well he accomplished his desire we all know.

For many years Liszt travelled through Europe giving concerts everywhere and always with phenomenal success. His concert-tours, which extended from Spain and England to Russia and Hungary, were really triumphal progresses. Much of his money he gave away—sometimes to relieve suffering brought about by some great calamity, sometimes to help needy brother artists, sometimes for the cause of music, particularly for “the Music of the Future.”

[Illustration: LISZT IN 1875

_Photograph taken in Budapest_]

In 1849 his career as a virtuoso-pianist practically came to an end and he settled in Weimar. He soon made this town the centre of a brilliant artistic life.

Professional and amateur musicians flocked there to study under the generous master who gave instruction to talented pupils without remuneration. Others came to hear rare and new works performed under his _bâton_ at the Court Theatre of which he was conductor. His splendid interpretations of _Lohengrin_ and _Tannhäuser_ contributed no little in establishing Wagner’s reputation at a time when he greatly needed such endorsement as Liszt was able to give.

In 1861 Liszt left Weimar and went to Rome, where he took minor orders in 1865. Subsequently he was known as the Abbé Liszt.

The last years of his life were divided between Rome, Weimar and Buda-Pesth, an active and influential force in musical art until his sudden death at Bayreuth in 1886.

There are two great paradoxes in the career of Liszt. The first is that just as Rossini, the most popular opera composer of his day, ceased writing operas thirty-nine years before his death, so Liszt, the greatest and most adored pianist of all times, ceased playing in public (except for an occasional charitable purpose) about the same number of years before his end came. He had with his inimitable art familiarized concert-goers with nearly all the best compositions for the piano created by other masters. He had transcribed for the same instrument a large number of songs, operatic melodies and orchestral works (the number of these transcriptions at his death was 371) thereby vastly increasing their vogue. He also wrote altogether 160 original compositions for the pianoforte, many of them as new in _form_ as in _substance_; unique among them being the fifteen _Hungarian Rhapsodies_—collections of Magyar melodies with gipsy ornaments molded by him into works of art, after the manner of epic poets. But—and here lies the second paradox—Liszt, the greatest of all pianists was not satisfied with the piano. In many of his pieces for it he endeavored to impart orchestral power and variety of tonal effect; and finally, when he became conductor at Weimar, in 1849, he transferred his attention chiefly to the Orchestra. Of his thirty-four orchestral works the most important are the _Faust_ and _Dante Symphonies_ and thirteen _Symphonic Poems_, in which he deviated from the old symphonic form in a spirit similar to Wagner’s operatic reforms—abolishing unconnected movements and allowing the underlying poetic idea to shape the form of the music.[79]

Liszt linked himself with Berlioz when he heard the _Symphonie fantastique_. He took up the cause of Berlioz and became his champion. But independently of Berlioz, Liszt was imbued with the Romantic Movement of 1830. To such a genius and man of the world who came in contact with all the great intellects of the day, it soon became natural to him to make art _human and emotional_.

Therefore in both his playing and his composition Liszt departed from the Classic ideals of an earlier period and became an expression of his own time. In his endeavor to depict and express emotions, ideas, scenes of nature and even events, he felt that the old Classic forms were suited only to music that was purely music and nothing else. In the new paths that the “Music of the Future” had made for itself a new form was needed to express sensations and ideas of a new age of keener observation, intense sentiment and passionate enthusiasm. Consequently Liszt invented the _Symphonic Poem_, in which the movements are not divided as in the regular Symphony but lead into one another.

In his orchestration Liszt followed Beethoven, Berlioz and Wagner. It is always rich and heavy and full of color. Liszt makes great use of the harp and his Hungarian blood shows itself in his marvellous and stirring rhythms.

“Concerning so prodigious an activity, so far-seeing an intelligence, so all-embracing a mind, so complete a musical organization, so ardent an imagination, so enthusiastic a nature, so unselfish a character, anything that may be said must seem inadequate.

“The spirit of Franz Liszt soared far above the petty meannesses of life. His influence has been great and far-reaching, and if he has left a priceless artistic legacy to the world, he has also given it a magnificent and unique example of benevolence and self-abnegation and realised to the fullest extent his own motto, _Génie oblige!_”

The third and greatest member of this remarkable trio, Richard Wagner, seems to have gathered up all that was best in the music that preceded him and having assimilated it in the crucible of his mind, gave it forth again, fresh, new and vital.

Wagner was born in Leipzig in 1803 and died in Venice, in 1883. His career as a musician began in 1833, after he had taken part in the Revolutionary politics of 1830.

His early life was spent in struggling with poverty and composing operas, which were not successful. He acquired greater fame as a _conductor_ than as a _composer_. Called to be conductor of the Dresden Orchestra in 1842, he began his work by conducting works of Berlioz, who was then making a tour in Germany. (See page 251.) Berlioz speaks gratefully of Wagner’s “zeal and good will” in this matter and also of the success of _Rienzi_ and _The Flying Dutchman_ in Dresden.

The active part he took in Revolutionary politics offended the Court; and Wagner, compelled to flee, hastened to Liszt in Weimar. Liszt got him a passport under a fictitious name; and Wagner hurried to Paris and thence to Zürich, where he finished _Lohengrin_ and sent it to Liszt to produce in Weimar.

The first half of Wagner’s life was singularly unhappy; the last was singularly happy. He had the good fortune to attract the interest of the young King of Bavaria, Ludwig II, who became his patron and turned Wagner’s dreams into realities.

After forty years of struggle and disappointment, Wagner had his own theatre at Bayreuth, where his works were given under ideal conditions. The Bayreuth Opera House was opened in 1876, with a great performance of the _Nibelungen Ring_; and the greatest artists of the day played in the Orchestra of which Wilhelmj was the first violinist. In the meanwhile, _Tristan_ had been splendidly performed in Munich in 1865 and _Die Meistersinger_ in 1868.

One of Wagner’s great ideas was to make the Orchestra a vital part of his music dramas. In other words he _carried the Symphony-Orchestra_ into the opera.

Wagner is the greatest master of orchestration that the world has ever seen.

“Wagner treats every instrument with the same certainty of touch as if he had played it himself. He knows, as no one else knows, how to avail himself of its resources, and he demands nothing of it beyond what is entirely within its capacity.

“Notwithstanding the large number of performers he requires, he never has recourse to complicated methods in his orchestration. The combinations are always clear and simple, resulting in a sonority that is both plain and powerful. The _Leitmotive_ (guiding themes) ceaselessly move about the whole Orchestra, passing from one desk to another; but, nevertheless, each one has a fondness for one special instrument, or one group of instruments, which agrees with its character, on which it is first heard and to which it returns whenever it must be heard again with preponderating importance. Sometimes we recognize it from its very first note by means of this characteristic _timbre_.

“Wagner developed the art of orchestration, of orchestral coloring to a point before unknown, a point which is _apparently_ its final limit; but in art there is no limit, its progress is endless. I will not name the person, but it seems to me that there is now among French composers one who has surpassed Wagner in this very respect. Wagner, however, in addition to the new combinations that he devised among the various instruments of the classic Orchestra, introduced new elements, notably tubas, a family intermediate between horns and trumpets, and the bass trumpet which figures in nearly all of his scores, and singularly enriches the group of brasses without rendering his instrumentation any more noisy.”[80]

“Wagner is a supreme master of instrumentation, of orchestral color. His Orchestra differs from Beethoven’s in the _quality_ of tone emitted; over and above effects of richness obtained by the more elaborate treatment of the inner part of the string-quartet, the frequent subdivision of violins, violas, violoncellos, the use of chromatics in horn and trumpet-parts, etc. There is a peculiar charm in the very sound of Wagner’s woodwind and brass. It is fuller than Beethoven’s, though singularly pure. And the reason for this is not far to seek. Wagner rarely employs instruments unknown to Beethoven, but he completes each group or family of wind-instruments with a view to _getting full chords from each group_.

“Thus the two clarinets of Beethoven’s Orchestra are supplemented by a third clarinet and a bass-clarinet if need be; the two oboes by a third oboe, or a cor anglais (alto oboe); the two bassoons by a third bassoon and a double-bassoon; the two trumpets by a third trumpet and a bass trumpet, etc. The results got by the use of these additional instruments are of greater significance than at first appears, since each set of instruments can thus produce complete chords and can be employed in full harmony without mixture of _timbre_ unless the composer so chooses.

[Illustration: WAGNER

_Photograph taken in Munich_]

“To account for the exceptional array of extra instruments in the scores of the _Nibelungen Ring_ it is enough to say that they are used as special means to special ends.

“Thus at the opening of the _Rheingold_, the question is what sound will best prepare for and accord with dim twilight and waves of moving water? The soft notes of the horns might be a musician’s answer; but to produce the full, smooth wavelike motion upon the notes of a single chord, the usual two, or four, horns are not sufficient, Wagner takes _eight_, and the unique and beautiful effect is secured.

“Again, in the next scene, the waves change to clouds: from misty mountain heights the gods behold Walhalla in the glow of the morning sun. Here subdued, solemn sound is required. How to get it? Use brass instruments _piano_. But the trumpets, trombones and tuba of Wagner’s usual Orchestra cannot produce enough of it. He, therefore, supplements them by other instruments of their family: a bass trumpet, two tenor and two bass tubas, a contrabass trombone and a contrabass tuba. Then the full band of thirteen brass instruments is ready for one of the simplest and noblest effects of sonority in existence.

“At the close of the _Rheingold_, Donner with his thunder-hammer clears the air of mist and storm-clouds; a rainbow spans the valley of the Rhine and over this glistening bridge the gods pass to Walhalla. What additional sounds shall accompany the glimmer and glitter of this scene? The silvery notes of harps might do it; but the sounds of a single harp would appear trivial, or would hardly be audible against the full Orchestra. Wagner takes _six_ harps, writes a separate part for each, and the desired effect is forthcoming.”[81]

It might seem that after Wagner nothing more could be done with the Orchestra. But the progress of Music, like all other arts, never ceases. We have three more great names to consider—Richard Strauss, Tschaikowsky and Debussy.

“Richard Strauss is an intellectual musician. Saint-Saëns pointed out long ago the master part harmony would play in the music of the future, and Strauss realized the theory that melody is no longer sovereign in the kingdom of tone. His master works are architectural marvels. In structure, in rhythmical complexity, in striking harmonies, ugly, bold, brilliant, dissonantal, his symphonic poems are without parallel. Berlioz never dared, Liszt never invented such marvels of polyphony, a polyphony beside which even Wagner’s is child’s play and Bach’s is rivalled. And this learning, this titanic brushwork on vast and sombre canvases are never for formal music’s sake; indeed, one may ask if it is indeed music and not a new art. It is always intended to mean something, say something, paint someone’s soul. It is an attempt to make the old absolute music new and articulate.

“The greatest technical master of the Orchestra, making of it a vibrating dynamic machine, a humming mountain of fire, Richard Strauss, by virtue of his musical imagination, is painter-poet and psychologist. He describes, comments and narrates in tones of jewelled brilliancy; his Orchestra flashes like a canvas of Monet,—the divided tones and the theory of complementary colors (over-tones) have their analogues in the manner with which Strauss intricately divides his various instrumental choirs: setting one group in opposition, or juxtaposition, to another; producing the most marvellous, unexpected effects by acoustical mirroring and transmutation of motives; and almost blinding the brain when the entire battery of reverberation and repercussion is invoked. If he can paint sunshine and imitate the bleating of sheep, he can also draw the full-length portrait of a man. This he proves with his _Don Quixote_, wherein the noble dreamer and his earthly squire are _heard_ in a series of adventures terminating with the death of the rueful knight—one of the most poignant pages in musical literature.”[82]

Richard Strauss was born in Munich, in 1864. His father, Franz Strauss, was first horn-player in the Court Orchestra and could play almost every orchestral instrument. He was an extraordinary musician. Once when playing under Wagner’s _bâton_, the composer said to him: “Strauss, you can’t be such an anti-Wagnerite as I hear. You play my music so beautifully!” “What has that got to do with it?” the horn-player replied.

Richard early showed his great genius. He played the piano at the age of four and began to compose at the age of six. While at school he had lessons on the piano and violin and studied composition.

“My father kept me very strictly to the old masters,” says Strauss, “in whose compositions I had a thorough grounding. You cannot appreciate Wagner and the moderns unless you pass through a grounding in the Classics. Young composers bring me voluminous manuscripts for my opinion on their productions. In looking at them, I generally find that they want to begin where Wagner left off. I say to all such: ‘My good young man, go home and study the works of Bach, the symphonies of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, and when you have mastered these art works come to me again.’ Without thoroughly understanding the significance of the development from Haydn _via_ Mozart and Beethoven to Wagner, these young students cannot appreciate at their proper worth either the music of Wagner, or of his predecessors. ‘What an extraordinary thing for Richard Strauss to say,’ these young men remark; but I only give them the advice gained by my own experience.”

Strauss early attracted the attention of Hans von Bülow, who played his _Serenade_ for wind instruments (op. 7) at Meiningen. In 1885 Strauss was chosen to succeed von Bülow as conductor of that famous Orchestra. In 1885 he became third _Kapellmeister_ in Munich, and, in 1889, assistant _Kapellmeister_ at Weimar. Later he returned to Munich as Court _Kapellmeister_; and three years later he was made general music director. For a little while he was conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and in 1899 was made _Kapellmeister_ at the Berlin Royal Opera, which position he still holds.

“If the now childish simplicity of Schubert’s orchestration proved a stumbling block to the Viennese Orchestra only fifty odd years ago, and furthermore Wagner’s _Tristan and Isolde_ shared the same fate at a still more recent date, it will not be difficult to realise that Strauss fifteen years ago taxed the virtuosity of the performers with passages that are no longer dreaded.

“The flexibility of execution that formerly was expected only of a first violinist is now imposed upon all five sections of the string band and each member finds before him the pages of what looks like a concerto. To the woodwind are assigned passages that Wagner would have hesitated to write. What Strauss demands from them, Beethoven might have demanded from the strings. Most prominent of all is the attention bestowed upon the deployment of the brass as initiated by Wagner. The trumpets are treated with unprecedented freedom, and are expected to perform passages either of flowing melody, or of rhythmic intricacy in the fastest of _tempi_. The horns are taught to display the agility of violoncellos. In four-part writing, the fourth horn is much used as a deep bass instrument absolutely apart from the three upper horns. The trombones are employed as much for unallied melodic utterance as for combined harmonic effects, and the intricacy of their parts constantly necessitates the use of three staves in the score. Incidental mention might also be made of such devices for acquiring weird tonal tints as obtained from muted trombones. Similar to Wagner’s procedure in the Overture to the _Meistersinger_, the tubas—and particularly the tenor tuba—are constantly detached from their conventional association with the trombones, for the purpose of giving expression to flowing _cantilena_.

“Novelty in the use of instruments of percussion is restricted to rhythmic peculiarities and original combinations with other instruments of more variable pitch; for Wagner’s general method of handling the battery cannot be improved upon.

“In a word, the three choirs of the Orchestra have advanced one step higher. The string-band has become so many virtuoso soloists. The woodwind replace the strings and are themselves replaced by the brass. The battery has acquired prominence such as the Classicists allowed to the trumpets and trombones.

“Strauss advances yet farther by making permanent Wagner’s occasional incorporation into the Orchestra of a second harp, an E-flat clarinet, a double quartet of horns, five instead of four trumpets, and a tenor tuba in addition to a bass tuba. The occasional addition of unusual instruments, such as an _oboe d’amore_ and saxophones, is required.”[83]

In 1864 one of the chief critics of Russia pointed out Tschaikowsky as “the future star of Russian music.” His prediction was verified. Tschaikowsky is now ranked with the great masters. His great popularity in this country is largely due to Mr. Walter Damrosch, who invited him to take part in a series of festival concerts in 1891 at the opening of Carnegie Hall in New York. Here Tschaikowsky conducted several of his works, many of which were already known and loved by concert-goers.

We are all familiar now with Tschaikowsky’s great sweeps of tone; dark, melancholy harmonies; and strange, barbaric rhythms.

“Tschaikowsky is eclectic, and many cosmopolitan woofs run through the fabric of his music. Italy influenced, then Germany, then France; and, in his later day, he let lightly fall the reins on the neck of his Pegasus and was much given to joyously riding in the fabled country of ballet, pantomime, and other delightful places.”[84]

This is perfectly true, but beyond and above all else Tschaikowsky is _Russian_.

“Like most Slavs,” writes Ernest Newman, “he drew sustenance more from France than Germany. Brahms he thought dull; Wagner he never really understood. He loved music, he said, that came from the heart, that expressed ‘a deep humanity,’ like Grieg’s. To the delicate brain and nerves of the modern man he added the long-accumulated eruptive passions of his race. He takes the language made by the great Germans and uses it to express the complex pessimism of another culture. The color of life in his music ranges from pale gray to intense black, with here and there a note of angry scarlet tearing through the mass of cloud.”

Peter Ilich Tschaikowsky was born in 1840 in Votinsk in the government of Viatka, where his father was inspector of the government mines, soon removing to Petrograd, where the boy received his education. He studied music, played the piano well, and composed light music; but with him at this time music was merely an accomplishment and a social pleasure. In 1861 he began to study music seriously and gave up his work to face poverty for the sake of art. In 1865 he completed his course at the Conservatory, where he had attracted the admiration of Anton Rubinstein with whom he studied orchestration. As an instance of his industry Rubinstein’s story may be quoted. “Once at the composition class,” said Rubinstein, “I set him to write out contrapuntal variations on a given theme, and I mentioned that in this class of work not only _quality_ but _quantity_ was of importance. I thought perhaps he would write about a dozen variations. But not at all. At the next class I received over two hundred. To examine all these would have taken me more time than it took him to write them.”

When Nicholas Rubinstein organized the Conservatory in Moscow in 1866, he gave Tschaikowsky the chair of professor of harmony. He spent much time in composing and Nicholas Rubinstein brought out his works at the concerts of the Russian Musical Society. Tschaikowsky’s life is in his works. Whether in Petrograd, Moscow, in his country home, in Paris, or travelling, he was always composing; and, consequently, his list of works is long.

[Illustration: TSCHAIKOWSKY

_Photograph taken in Petrograd_]

Although Tschaikowsky wrote light operas, he is chiefly known for his orchestral music—his magnificent symphonies and his symphonic poems. So immense are these works in their effect that the hearer often imagines that Tschaikowsky called for an orchestra with as many additional instruments, new and old, as Richard Strauss. This is not the case, however. For instance, in the _Symphonie pathetique_ he has the Beethoven orchestra with the addition of the bass tuba.

“A remarkable feature of his scoring is the extreme modern effect secured with comparatively modest means. He expressed himself in a language of profound pathos which was in part due to the embodiment of weird and gloomy orchestration. He made prominent use of low woodwind, which were constantly combined with the violas, and he evinced peculiar predilection for clarinets in their low range and bassoons in their upper range.”[85]

In the _Casse Noisette_ Suite (Nut-cracker Suite), which is so charming in its playfulness, his instrumentation is particularly novel. In it he introduced the celesta (see page 128).

Tschaikowsky should be described as a follower of Berlioz, Liszt, and Mozart. He was particularly devoted to Mozart as his fourth orchestral suite, entitled _Mozartiana_ plainly shows. In a preface to this work Tschaikowsky says: “A large number of the most admirable compositions of Mozart are, for some inexplicable reason, hardly known not only to the public but even to the majority of musicians.”

Tschaikowsky died of cholera in Petrograd in 1893.

We have seen that in the days of Berlioz the French public cared more for operatic than for symphonic music. After Berlioz, composers devoted much more thought to the Orchestra; and French music now contains a long list of masterpieces and admirable works.

Orchestral concerts under the direction of Habeneck and Pasdeloup and afterwards under Lamoureux and Colonne did much to make symphonic music popular in Paris.

The greatest name in the development of Orchestral music since Berlioz is that of Saint-Saëns, whose orchestration, although rich and elaborate, is always clear and polished to the last degree. The exquisite Symphonic Poem, called _Le Rouet d’Omphale_, may be taken as an example. It is not merely a beautiful piece of descriptive writing, but it is beautifully scored.

Camille Saint-Saëns is the oldest living French composer. He was born in 1835 in Paris and early showed his great talent for music. At the age of seven he began to study the piano with Stamaty and harmony with Maleden. In 1846, at the age of eleven, he appeared at a concert in the Salle Pleyel; and a year later entered the Conservatory. Here he made a name for himself. His _Symphony_, composed at the age of sixteen, was successfully performed. In 1858 he became organist at the Madeleine in Paris and astonished everyone by his feats of improvisation. Meantime, he continued composing. He has produced an immense number of works that include every kind of composition from operas to chamber-music, songs and pieces for the harp.

[Illustration: SAINT-SAËNS’ FESTIVAL CONCERT

_Paris, 1896_]

Saint-Saëns has also been an extensive traveller and has spent much time in Algiers. He is an incomparable pianist, a fine musical critic, and an excellent writer. Saint-Saëns is another instance of the general culture required of the modern musician—the type that came into existence after the Revolution of 1830 (see page 244).

Saint-Saëns was made an officer of the Legion d’Honneur in 1884. On June 2, 1896, the fiftieth anniversary of his first public appearance was celebrated in the Salle Pleyel, on which occasion Taffanel conducted the orchestra and Sarasate played a sonata by Saint-Saëns (see illustration facing 268), with the composer at the piano. At the age of seventy he came to America and astonished his audiences by playing his five piano concertos, accompanied by Walter Damrosch and the New York Symphony Orchestra, with marvellous skill and the fire of youth.

Debussy is a modern of the moderns; and, moreover, he has led music into a new path.

Debussy is, however, but one of a group of French musicians who, for the last thirty or forty years, have been developing French music more according to the traditional taste of their nation than it had been since the days of Rameau. In fact, these musicians have carried music back to its fountain head; and we may say that the same spirit that characterized the works of the _trouvères_ of the Fifteenth Century (music such as is being played by King René’s musicians in our frontispiece); the same spirit that was expressed in the music of the French Renaissance; the same spirit that was heard in the operas and ballets of Lully and Rameau lives again, though in a new form.

Of all these modern French composers—Gabriel Fauré, Maurice Ravel, Albert Roussel, Emmanuel Chabrier, Vincent d’Indy, Ernest Chausson, Henri Duparc, Paul Dukas, Florent Schmitt, Déodat de Séverac, and Ernest Satie—Claude Debussy is the leading spirit; and, perhaps, the greatest genius.

Claude Achille Debussy was born at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, in 1862. He entered the Conservatory in Paris at the age of twelve and studied under Albert Lavignac, Marmontel, Durand, and Guiraud. In 1884 he took the _prix de Rome_; and from the Eternal City he went to Russia. On his return to Paris he became one of the frequent guests at those famous _soirées_ of Mallarmé, where painters, poets, sculptors, and musicians gathered.

His piano works, songs, instrumental pieces, and orchestral compositions, such as _L’Après midi d’un faune_, were admired by many persons on their first hearing; but his audience was comparatively small until the opera of _Pelleas et Mélisande_ made him known throughout the world. Here was an entirely new idea in music. The Orchestra did not annotate, nor emphasize the actions of the persons on the stage, but it became a soft, melodious atmosphere, a delicious web of harmony enfolding the entire work. It was like nothing that had ever been written.

[Illustration: DEBUSSY

_Photograph taken in Paris_]

One idea of Debussy’s in orchestral writing is to get the greatest effect with the simplest means. To produce these effects Debussy employs many old scales and harmonic chords. His instrumentation, therefore, seems diaphanous, ethereal, and suffused with delicate, opalescent colors. He is in sympathy with the _impressionists_ in painting and the _symbolists_ in poetry. The fluid quality of his music lends itself to the description of water. His works are full of the sound of water—the sea, fountains, and silvery rain falling upon dim gardens. He creates a sense of mystery and atmospheric beauties as no one else has ever done.

In the _Afternoon of a Faun_:

“The ascending and descending introductory bars given out by an unaccompanied flute convey an idea of pastoral charm. A characteristic bucolic horn motive follows, and the first theme is repeated with muted string accompaniment. The whole scoring of the composition is of cobweb delicacy. The Orchestra is composed of three flutes, oboes, clarinets, four horns, two harps, antique cymbals, and strings. The principal themes are given by clarinets, oboes, and harps respectively. A scale of whole tones is heard on the clarinet; this leads to another section marked _più animato_, in which the oboe voices the principal theme. These subjects are all interwoven with and linked to other themes. They are heard sometimes as solos, sometimes concerted. The rhythm of the whole work is free and varied. The strings, muted or otherwise, are often used as a kind of background to the wind solos, which is most effective. A veil of palpitating heat seems to be suffused over the composition and corresponds to the glow of Eastern sunlight in the poem and also to the remote, visionary nature of the poet’s imagery and fancies. The tone poem also recalls the golden noon of an Idyl of Theocritus. All through the piece the composer preserves this feeling of elusiveness, of mirage: he attains it by the use of delicate unusual harmonies and by the silvery, web-like tracery of his phrases. The frequent use of the scale of whole tones and the unresolved dissonances produce a distinct charm of their own. The chords are of an exceeding richness and present a depth of glowing color. The interspersed solos for violin, oboe, clarinet, _cor anglais_, resemble dainty broidery, and portray intimately the ramifications of doubt and longing in the faun’s mind, which he likens to a multitude of branches with slender pointed sprays and sprigs.”[86]

Debussy thus explains some of his titles: “The title of _Nocturnes_ is to be interpreted in a wider sense than that usually given, and most especially it should be understood as having a decorative meaning. Therefore, the usual form of Nocturne has not been considered, and the word should be accepted as signifying in the fullest manner diversified impressions.

“_Nuages_ (clouds)—the unchanging aspect of the sky and the slow, solemn movement of the clouds dissolving in gray tints lightly touched with white.

“_Fêtes_ (festivities)—the restless dancing rhythm of the atmosphere interspersed with sudden flashes of light. There is also an incidental procession (a dazzling imaginary vision) passing through and mingling with the aërial revelry; but the background of uninterrupted festivity is persistent with its blending of music and luminous dust participating in the universal rhythm of all things.

“_Sirénes_ (sirens)—the sea and its perpetual rhythm, and then amid waves silvered by moonbeams are heard the laughter and mysterious song of passing sirens.”

[Illustration: ORCHESTRA OF THE SYMPHONY SOCIETY OF NEW YORK

_Walter Damrosch conducting_]

Some critics have called Debussy a revolutionist. They are wrong. Debussy’s musical ancestors are Rameau and Couperin; and his works show us that “_revolution_ is merely _evolution_ made clear for all to see.”

Such is the French music of the present—beautiful, refined, clear, polished, delicate, enchanting!

* * * * *

We, in our great country, like to hear all schools of music, and our wonderful orchestras are able to play equally well the works of all composers and of all schools and nationalities. Some of us prefer the French, some of us the Russian, and some of us the German Schools; but our taste is broad and cultured, and we wish to hear the various ways in which the musical minds of the day are expressing themselves.

What an advance since the days of “a consort of lutes, or viols”! What a development since the Fifteenth Century, when gentle ladies played the _psaltérion_ and flute and _vielle_, as seen in our frontispiece! But to appreciate the evolution of the Orchestra, let us look at the picture of an Orchestra of the Eleventh Century (facing page 274), the earliest known representation of any Orchestra, taken from the capital of a column of a church near Rouen, and then compare it with the picture of the Symphony Society of New York (facing page 272).

Between these two Orchestras, separated by a period of eight hundred years, we can realize the progress of “music’s ever welling spring, which has flowed through the centuries until it has become an ocean.”