Critical and Historical Essays
popularity, with perhaps the one exception of "Samson and
Delilah." His other operas are: "The Yellow Princess,"
"Proserpina," "Etienne Marcel," "Henry VIII," "Ascanio."
Jules Massenet was born in 1842, and at the age of twelve
became a pupil of Bezit at the Conservatoire, was rejected by
Bezit for want of talent, and afterward studied with Reber and
Thomas, and won the _Prix de Rome_ in 1863. Upon his return,
in 1866, he wrote a number of small orchestral works, including
two suites and several sacred dramas, "Marie Magdalen" and
"Eve and the Virgin," in which the general Meyerbeerian style
militated against any suggestion of religious feeling. His
first grand opera, "Le roi de Lahore," was given in 1881.
The second was "Herodiade," which was followed by "Manon,"
"The Cid," "Esclarmonde," "Le mage."
XVIII
OPERA (Continued)
One of the most disputed questions in modern music is that of
opera. Although we have many controversies as to what purely
instrumental or vocal music may do, the operatic art, if we
may call it so, always remains the same. In creating the music
drama, Wagner put forth a composite art, something which many
declare impossible, and as many others advocate as being the
most complete art form yet conceived. We are still in the
midst of the discussion, and a final verdict is therefore
as yet impossible. On one hand we have Wagner, and against
him we have the absolutists such as Brahms, the orthodox
thinkers represented by Anton Rubinstein and many others,
the new Russian school represented by Cui, Rimsky-Korsakov,
Tchaikovsky, and the successors of the French school of
Meyerbeer, namely, Saint-Saens, Massenet, etc.
In order to get a clear idea of the present state of the
matter we must review the question from the beginning of the
eighteenth century. For many reasons this is not an easy task,
first of all because very little of the music of the operas
of this period actually exists. We know the names of Hasse,
Pergolesi, Matheson, Graun, Alessandro Scarlatti (who was a much
greater man than his son the harpsichord player and composer,
Domenico), to name only a few. To be sure, a number of the
French operas of the period are preserved, owing to the custom
in France of engraving music. In Germany and Italy, however,
such operas were never printed, and one may safely say that
it was almost the rule for only one manuscript copy to be
available. Naturally this copy belonged to the composer, who
generally led the opera himself, improvising much of it on the
harpsichord, as we shall see later. As an instance of the danger
which operas, under such conditions, ran of being destroyed
and thus lost to the world, we may cite the total destruction
of over sixty of Hasse's operas in his extreme old age.
The second point which makes it difficult for us to get an
absolutely clear insight into the conditions of opera at the
beginning of the eighteenth century lies in the fact that
contemporary historians never brought their histories up
to their own times. Thus Marpurg, in his history, divides
music into four periods; first, that of Adam and Eve to
the flood; second, from the flood to the Argonauts; third,
to the beginning of the Olympiads; fourth, from thence to
Pythagoras. The same may be said of the celebrated histories
of Gerbert and Padre Martini.
On the other hand, we are certain that much of the modern
speculation was anticipated by these men. For instance, Matheson
calls pantomime "dumb music," freed from melodic and harmonic
forms. The idea was advanced that music owes its rhythmic
regularity and form to dancing, and architecture was called
frozen music, a metaphor which, in later days, was considered
such an original conception of Goethe and Schlegel. This same
inability of historians to bring their accounts up to the
contemporary times may be noticed in the later works of Forkel
(d. 1818) and Ambros (d. 1876).
Yet a third reason remains which tends to confuse the student
as to what really constituted opera. This is owing to the fact
that there existed the very important element of improvisation,
of which I shall speak later.
In order to see what Gluck, Weber, and Wagner had to break away
from, let us look at the condition of opera at the beginning
of the eighteenth century. We remember that opera, having
become emancipated from the Church long before any other music,
developed apace, while instrumental (secular) music was still in
its infancy. In Germany, even the drama was neglected for its
kindred form of opera; therefore, in studying its development,
we may well understand why the dramatic stage considered the
opera its deadly enemy.
The life of the German dramatist and actor of the first half
of the eighteenth century was one of the direst hardship and
poverty. Eckhof, one of the greatest actors of his time, made
his entry into Brunswick in a kind of miserable hay cart, in
which, accompanied by his sick wife and several dogs, he had
travelled over the rough roads. To keep warm they had filled
part of the wagon with straw. The German actor and dramatist
of that time often died in the hospital, despised by the richer
classes; even the village priests and ministers refused to allow
them to eat at their tables. Their scenery rarely consisted
of more than three rough pieces: a landscape, a large room,
and a peasant's hut interior. Many even had only two large
cloths which were hung about the stage, one green, which was
to be used when the scene was in the open air, and the other
yellow, which was used to represent an interior. Shakespeare's
"Poor Players" were certainly a stern reality in Germany. In
order to attract the public the plays had to consist for the
most part of the grossest subjects imaginable, it being barely
possible to smuggle some small portion of serious drama into
the entertainment.
With opera, however, it was vastly different; opera troupes
were met at the city gates by the royal or ducal carriages,
and the singers were feted everywhere. The prices paid them
can only be compared with the salaries paid nowadays. They
were often ennobled, and the different courts quarrelled for
the honour of their presence. The accounts of the cost of
the scenery used are incredible, amounting to many thousands
of dollars for a single performance.
One of the earliest German kapellmeisters and opera composers
was Johann Adolf Hasse, who was born in Dresden about 1700. To
show the foundation upon which Gluck built, we will look at
opera as it existed in Hasse's time. In 1727 Hasse married at
Venice, Faustina Bordoni, the foremost singer of the time. He
wrote over one hundred operas for her, and had a salary of
thirty-six thousand marks, or nine thousand dollars, yearly. Now
these operas were very different from those we know. The arias
in them (and, of course, the whole opera was practically but a
succession of arias) were only sketched in an extremely vague
manner. Much was left to the singer, and the accompaniment
was sparsely indicated by figures written above a bass. The
recitative which separated one aria from another was improvised
by the singer, and was accompanied on the harpsichord by the
kapellmeister, who was naturally obliged to improvise his
part on the spur of the moment, following the caprice of the
singer. There was no creating an atmosphere for a tragic or
dramatic situation by means of the accompaniment; as soon as
the situation arrived, an aria was sung explaining it. Now,
as the singer was given much latitude in regard to the melody,
and _absolute_ liberty in regard to the recitative, it is easy
to see that, with the astounding technical perfection possessed
by the singers of the time, this latitude would be used to
astonish the hearers by wonderful vocal feats intermingled
with more or less passionate declamation.
The composer was merely the excuse for the opera; but he
needed to be a consummate musician to conduct and accompany
this improvised music, of which his written score was but the
nucleus. The wretched acting of opera singers in general has
been rather humourously traced back to this epoch. Nowadays,
in an opera, when, by way of example, a murder is to be
committed, the orchestra paints the situation, and the act is
accomplished without delay. In those olden days a singer would
have indignantly refused to submit to such a usurpation of
his rights; he would have raised his dagger, and then, before
striking, would have sung an aria in the regular three parts,
after which he would have stabbed his man. The necessity for
doing something during this interim is said to be responsible
for those idiotic gestures which used to be such a seemingly
necessary part of the equipment of the opera singer.
In the ordinary opera of the time there was the custom of
usually having about from twenty to thirty such arias (Hasse's
one hundred operas contain about three thousand arias). Now
these arias, although they were intended to paint a situation,
rapidly became simply a means to display the singer's skill. The
second part was a melody with plenty of vocal effects, and
the third part a bravura piece, pure and simple. So there
only remained the recitative in which true dramatic art could
find place. As this, however, was invariably improvised by the
singer, one can see that the composer of music had his cross
as well as his brother the dramatist. The music having no vital
connection with the text, it is easy to see how one opera could
be set to several texts or _vice-versa_, as was often done.
Another factor also contributed to retard the artistic
development of opera. All these arias had to be constructed
and sung according to certain customs. Thus, the fiery, minor
aria was always sung by the villain, the so-called colorature
arias by the tall, majestic heroine, etc.
All this seems childish to us, but it was certainly a powerful
factor in making fame for a composer. For, as has been said,
while a modern composer writes two or three different operas,
Hasse wrote one hundred versions of one. This also had its
effect on instrumental music, and, in a way, is also the direct
cause of that monstrosity known as "variations" (Haendel wrote
sixty-six on one theme.) In our days we often hear the bitter
complaint that opera singers are no longer what they used
to be, and that the great art of singing has been lost. If
we look back to the period under consideration, we cannot
but admit that there is much truth in the contention. In the
first place, an opera singer of those days was necessarily
an actor of great resource, a thorough musician, a composer,
and a marvellous technician. In addition to this, operas were
always written for individuals. Thus, all of Hasse's were
designed for Faustina's voice; and by examining the music,
we can tell exactly what the good and bad points of her voice
were, such was the care with which it was written.
Before we leave the subject of Hasse and his operas, I wish
to refer briefly to a statement found in all histories and
books on music. We find it stated that all this music was sung
and played either loud or soft; with no gradual transitions
from one to the other. The existence of that gradual swelling
or diminishing of the tone in music which we call crescendo
and diminuendo, is invariably denied, and its first use is
attributed to Jommelli, director of the opera at Mannheim, in
1760. Thus we are asked to believe that Faustina sang either
_piano_ or _forte_, and still was an intensely dramatic singer.
This seems to me to require no comment; especially as, already
in 1676, Matthew Locke, an English writer, uses the [<] sign
for the gradual transition from soft to loud. For obvious
reasons there could be no such transition in harpsichord music,