Critical and Historical Essays
little as possible should be going on during the singing. Thus,
such melodies as we find in these old pastoral plays would be
accompanied by short notes, serving merely to give the pitch
and tonality, which would gradually develop into chords,
thus laying the foundation for harmony.
If, on the other hand, we look at the "church play" of the
same period, the Mystery, and remember that it was sung by
men accustomed to singing the _organum_ of Hucbald, we have
a clue as to what it was and what it led up to. For while
one part or voice of the music would give a melody (copied
from or at any rate resembling the Gregorian chant or the
sequences of Notker of Tubilo), the other voices would sing
songs in the vernacular, and, strangest of all, one voice
would repeat some Latin word, or even a "nonsense word"
(to use Edward Lear's term) but much more slowly than the
other voices. Thus the needs of the Mystery were as well met
by incipient counterpoint on the one hand, as, on the other,
the secular song-play engendered the sense of harmony.
That the early secular forerunner of opera, as represented by
"Robin et Marian," was still, to a certain degree, controlled
by the church is clear if we remember that at that time the
only methods of noting music were entirely in the hands of the
clergy. The notation for the lute, for instance, was invented
about 1460 to 1500. Thus, we can say that the recording of
secular music was not free from church influence until some
time after the sixteenth century.
This primitive "opera" music was thus fettered by difficulty of
notation and the influence of the ecclesiastical rules until
perhaps about 1600, when the first real opera began to find a
place in Italy. Jacopo Peri and Caccini were among the first
workers in the comparatively new form, and they both took
the same subject, _Eurydice_. Of the former the following
two short excerpts will suffice; the first is where Orpheus
bewails his fate; in the second he expresses his joy at bringing
Eurydice back to earth. Caccini's opera was perhaps the first
to introduce the many useless ornaments that, up to the middle
of this century, were characteristic of Italian opera.
EURYDICE--PERI.
Orpheus bewailing his fate.
[Figure 43]
[W: I weep not, I am not sighing, tho' thou art from me taken.
What use to sigh]
Orpheus' joy in bringing back Eurydice.
[Figure 44]
[W: Gioi-te al canto mio serve frondo di che in su l'au rora]
[14] It is interesting to note as to the prevalence of Latin,
that Dante's "Divina Commedia" was the first important
poem in Italian. Latin was used on the stage in Italy
up to the sixteenth century; the stationary chorus
stationed on the stage remained until the seventeenth
century and was not entirely discontinued until the
first half of the eighteenth century.
XVII
OPERA
No art form is so fleeting and so subject to the dictates of
fashion as opera. It has always been the plaything of fashion,
and suffers from its changes. To-day the stilted figures of
Hasse, Pergolesi, Rameau, and even Gluck, seem as grotesque
to us as the wigs and buckles of their contemporaries. To
Palestrina's masses and madrigals, Rameau's and Couperin's
clavecin pieces, and all of Bach, we can still listen without
this sense of incongruity. On the other hand, operas of
Alessandro Scarlatti, Matheson, and Porpora would bore us
unmitigatedly. They have gone out of fashion. Even the modern
successors of these men, Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi, in his
earlier years, have become dead letters musically, although only
as late as 1845, Donizetti was at the very zenith of his fame.
Of all the operas of the past century, our present public has
not seen or even heard of one, with the exception of "The Magic
Flute," and less probably "Don Juan." This is bad enough;
but if we look at works belonging to the first part of the
nineteenth century, we find the same state of affairs. The
operas of Spontini, Rossini, most of Meyerbeer's, even Weber's
"Freischuetz," have passed away, seemingly never to return. Even
"Cavalleria Rusticana," of recent creation, is falling rapidly
into oblivion. Thus the opera comique early disappeared in
favour of the romantic opera and the operetta. The former has
already nearly ended its career, and the latter has descended
to the level of mere farce. In the course of time, these opera
forms become more and more evanescent; for the one-act opera of
miniature tragedy, which is practically only a few years old,
is already almost extinct.
And yet this art form has vastly more hold on the public than
other music destined to outlive it. The fact is, that music
which is tied down to the conventionalities and moods of its
time and place can never appeal but to the particular time and
mood which gave it birth. (Incidentally, I may say the same of
music having its roots in the other peculiarities of folk song.)
Now the writers of these operas were great men who put their
best into their work; the cause of the failure of these operas
was not on account of the music, but the ideas and thoughts
with which this music was saddled. What were the books which
people read and loved in those days (1750-1800), that is,
books upon which operas might be built? In England we find "The
Castle of Otranto," "The Mysterious Mother," etc., by Horace
Walpole. Now Macaulay says that Horace Walpole's works rank
as high among the delicacies of intellectual epicures as the
Strasburg pie among the dishes described in the _Almanach des
Gourmands_. None but an unhealthy and disorganized mind could
have produced such literary luxuries as the works of Walpole.
France had not yet recovered from the empty formalism of
the preceding century, Bernardin de St. Pierre was a kind
of colonial Mlle. Scudery, and Jean Jacques Rousseau, one
of the sparks which were to ignite the French Revolution,
writes his popular opera to the silly story of "The Village
Soothsayer." Had not Gluck written to the classics he would
have had to write "a la Watteau."
In Germany, conditions were better; for the so-called Romantic
school had just begun to make headway. In opera, however, this
school of Romanticism only commenced to make itself felt later,
when we have a crop of operas on Fouque's "Undine" as well as
"Hofmann's Tales."
It is as though opera had to dress according to the prevailing
fashion of the day. The very large sleeves of one year look
strange to us a little later. Just so is it with opera; for
those old operas by Mehul, Spontini, Salieri, and others all
wear enormous crinolines, while the contemporary instrumental
works of the same period, unfettered by fashion, still possess
all the freedom which their limited speech permitted them to
have. Thus we see that opera is necessarily a child of the times
in which it is written, in contrast to other music which echoes
but the thought of the composer, thought that is not necessarily
bound down to any time, place, or peculiarity of diction.
In Germany, Italian opera was never accepted by the people as
it was in France. In the latter country, opera had to be in the
vernacular and practically to become _French_. Lully's operas
were written to libretti by Quinault and Corneille; and while,
as early as 1645, Paris imported its opera from Italy, this
art form was rapidly modified to suit the public for which
it was secured. Even with Piccini and Gluck, and down to
Rossini and Meyerbeer, this nationalism was infused into the
foreign product. In Germany the case was entirely different,
for up to the very last, Italian opera was a thing apart.
Although German composers, such as Mozart and Paer, wrote
Italian opera, the "Singspiel" (a kind of opera comique),
found its culminating point in Weber's "Freischuetz," which
fought against Rossini's operas for supremacy in Germany.
Gluck's victory over the Piccinists gave to the French form
of Italian opera an impetus that caused Cherubini to proceed
on almost the same lines in his operas, the "Water Carrier,"
etc. Cherubini was a pupil of Andreas Sarti, a celebrated
contrapuntist and a disciple of the last of the Italian church
composers who looked back to Palestrina for inspiration. Thus
the infusion of a certain soberness of diction, which we call
German, fitted in with the man's training and predilections.
The first names we meet with in French opera after Cherubini
are those of Gretry, Mehul, and Spontini. The former was a
Frenchman whose works are now obsolete, although Macfarren, in
the "Encyclopedia Brittanica," says that he is the only French
composer of symphonies that are known and enjoy popularity
in France.
Gretry was born in Liege, about 1740. He walked to Italy,
studied in Rome, and returned to France about 1770. None of
his works have come down to us, but his name is interesting
by reason of a certain contradiction in his operas. This
contradiction consists in his being one of the first to revive
the idea of the hidden orchestra; it is interesting also to
note that in his "Richard Coeur de Lion," he anticipated
Wagner's use of the _leitmotiv_. His words on the hidden
orchestra sound strangely modern:
PLAN FOR A NEW THEATRE.--I should like the auditorium
of my theatre to be small, holding at the most one
thousand persons and consisting of a sort of open
space, without boxes, small or great; for these nooks
only encourage talking and scandal. I would like
the orchestra to be concealed, so that neither the
musicians nor the lights on their music stands could
be visible to the spectators.
Mehul was born about 1763 in the south of France, and is
celebrated, among other things, as being a pupil of Gluck,
in Paris. He was also noted for having, at the request of
Napoleon, brought out an opera based on Macpherson's "Ossian,"
in which no violins were used in the orchestra. "Joseph,"
another opera of his, is occasionally given in small German
towns. Mehul died in 1817.
Spontini, the next representative of opera in France, was an
Italian, born in 1774. He went to Paris in 1803, where, through
the influence of the Empress Josephine, he was enabled to have
several small operas performed; finally in 1807 his "Vestal,"
written to a French text, was given with great success. In this,
his greatest work, he followed Gluck's footsteps, not only in
the music, but also in the choice of a classic subject. In 1809,
he branched out into a more romantic vein with the opera of
"Fernando Cortez." His other works never attained popularity.
After the Restoration in France, he was named director of the
court music in Berlin by the King of Prussia, at an annual
salary of ten thousand thalers (about $7,500), a position he
held from 1820 to 1840. He died in Italy in 1851. Spontini may
be said to have been the last representative of the Gluck opera;
but he also brought into it all the magnificence in scenery,
etc., that would naturally be expected by the fashion of the
First Empire. He made no innovations, and merely served to
keep alive the traditions of Grand Opera in France.
The next powerful influence in France, and indeed in all
Europe, was that of Rossini. He may be said to have built on
Gluck's ideas in many ways. Born in 1792, at Pesaro, in Italy,
he wrote many operas of the flimsy Italian style while still
a boy. At twenty-one he had already written his "Tancredi"
and the opera buffa, "The Italians in Algiers." His best work
(besides "William Tell") was "The Barber of Seville." Other
works are "Cinderella" (_La Cenerentola_), "The Thieving
Blackbird" (_La Gazza Ladra_), "Moses," and "The Lady of the
Lake." These operas were mostly made up of parts of others
that were failures, a la Hasse. An engagement being offered