Corelli and Scarlatti must both be given an important place in the history of music. Of the two men, Scarlatti had the greater genius, but he turned it to use in a form of music which could not develop beyond where he left it, which was radically false and destined to oblivion. Corelli, on the other hand, composing far less, gave violin music the secure foundation upon which all later musicians have built, and left examples of simple instrumental music which still hold their place by force of their calm, genuine feeling. It is strange to think of Corelli on tour in Naples some two hundred years ago, sitting nervous and confused at the head of Scarlatti’s orchestra, stupidly making mistakes; and of Scarlatti, then at the pinnacle of fame, polite and kind.
Alessandro Scarlatti’s son, Domenico, was born in Naples in 1685, during the second year of his father’s stay there. With whom he studied is unknown, but in his youth he was both in Naples and Rome. His first work was in Naples. In 1705 his father sent him to Venice with the great singer Nicolino, and gave him a letter to Ferdinand de Medici in Florence in which he wrote: ‘This son of mine is an eagle whose wings are grown; he ought not to stay idle in the nest, and I ought not to hinder his flight.... Under the sole escort of his own artistic ability he sets forth to meet whatever opportunities may present themselves for making himself known—opportunities for which it is hopeless to wait in Rome nowadays.’
In 1708 Handel came to Venice and the two men seem to have gone to Rome together for a competition on harpsichord and organ before Cardinal Ottoboni, the generous patron of Corelli. At any rate, the competition took place and Handel was judged the better organist, while the victory for harpsichord was undecided. After this the two young men, of the same age, became warm friends. Handel shortly after established himself in London, but Scarlatti’s life was always a wandering one. He was at various times in the service of the Queen of Poland in Rome, as composerfor her private theatre;maestro da capellaof St. Peter’s, where he composed sacred music; in London, producing his operas; in Lisbon; and, finally, at the court of Spain, where he was appointed music-master to the princess of the Asturias. After fifteen years in Spain he returned to Naples, and died there in 1757. He left no money, but his family was provided for by the great singer Farinelli, who, likewise, had been many years at the court of Spain in highest favor.
Domenico Scarlatti’s operas and masses are now forgotten, but his fame as a composer for the harpsichord is immortal. What Chopin and Liszt did for the pianoforte music of their day Scarlatti did for music for the harpsichord in his. It has been often said that he was the founder of the pianoforte style. This is true, unless the French composer François Couperin shares the honor with him. Of the brilliant virtuoso style he is unquestionably the founder. His instinct for style and form made no false step, and his music is astonishingly sparkling and fresh when played by modern virtuosi on the modern pianoforte. The works of his French contemporaries, Couperin and Rameau, are unmatched in delicacy and grace and a most refined sentiment; still it may be said that their charm to modern ears consists not a little in an exquisite old-fashioned spirit which breathes from a court life long since ruthlessly stamped under foot, whereas Scarlatti’s music compels attention and admiration even to-day by its vigor, flash, and daring. Moreover, it is free as air from all heaviness of rhythm or of contrapuntal intricacies and yet is none the less clear-cut and perfect in form. It is, first of all, virtuoso music. Most of the pieces demand the utmost speed and lightness of touch. Among the most difficult devices he frequently employed is the crossing of hands, by which he obtained instrumental effects hardly less brilliant than those of Liszt. And yet his music is not all emptydisplay. There is an epigrammatic clearness about it which has the sparkle of all genuine wit, irrespective of the time which gave it birth, and at times there is a masculine touch of poetry, enriched by various expressive harmonies, notably in one, the most famous of his sonatas, that in D minor, which is familiar to all concert-goers in the elaborated form and higher key into which Tausig has transcribed it. Unlike other composers in his day, he did not set four or five pieces together in a suite, but kept his pieces separate, and called each one a sonata or an exercise. Nor did he label any of them with the dainty suggestive names that became the fashion in France and Germany. They are all short and all in the same form. Each is made up of two sections, one of which begins in the tonic and modulates to the dominant, or, if the key is minor, to the relative major; the other from this key back to end in the tonic, frequently by way of contrasting remote keys. Both sections are repeated in their turn. The effect is one of precise balance and clearness. There are generally two quite distinct figures or even themes which are employed in such a way as to suggest the sonata form of later development, the first given at the start in the tonic key, the second in the second part of the first section in the dominant or relative major; and the sparkling liveliness of the pieces depends not a little on the contrast and play of these two distinct figures, their neat and regular arrangement, and the satisfying return of them in the second section of the piece. Such an aptness, such a clear-headed wit is hardly met with anywhere else in music. If the glitter of Scarlatti’s harpsichord music is sometimes hard, it is never false. It is the glitter of a diamond, not of tinsel. It has never tarnished. It flashes brilliantly from an age when much was false—clean-cut, polished, impervious, and, in its pointed way, defiant.
Thus in Italy three men sum up the seventeenth century and inaugurate the eighteenth. They were not alone in their day, but their contemporaries, once equally famous, have for the most part sunk into an oblivion from which only the enthusiastic historian recovers them. And even the most gifted of these three, Alessandro Scarlatti, becomes daily less a substance and more a shade, though what there was of intrinsic worth in the Italian opera of that time was developed and adorned by him to stand as a model for Handel, for Haydn and Mozart, and for Rossini and Verdi. Corelli, his friend, and Domenico Scarlatti, his son, built with less perishable stuff and on the foundations which they laid for the branches of music in which they were adept great monuments have been reared. Their genius and their musicianship were less great than those of the elder Scarlatti, but their compositions were of a piece with reality, not, like his, the adornment of a false and meaningless convention. Hence their music still speaks for itself to-day, a language sometimes thin, but in the main clear and strong, whereas others must speak for Scarlatti. In the oratorios of Handel and in the vocal works of Bach the best of what the Italian opera composers of the seventeenth century accomplished was perpetuated, and Scarlatti was unquestionably the greatest of these composers. The seeds of his genius were thus transplanted from the sterile soil in which circumstances had forced him to sow them and they bore fruit in strange forms and alien lands.
So ended the supremacy of the Italians in the history of music. After the death of Scarlatti the Neapolitan opera became wholly trivial. The list of composers is long. Some are distinguished by a certain elegance of style, such as Feo, Vinci, and Cafaro, others by a cleverness in handling the orchestra, such as Durante, and still others, notably Porpora and Leo, were verygreat teachers of singing; but for the most part they were all as like as eggs and none added anything of lasting value to music. The comic opera alone had any real life. This, the last creation of the Italians, was powerful in directing the course of music and will be treated in another chapter.
What Alessandro Scarlatti did for opera in Italy, Lully had done for opera in France. The French opera, like the English opera, of which we have the one splendid example in Purcell’s ‘Dido and Æneas,’ was of quite distinct origin from the Italian. Whereas the Italian opera sprang from attempts to restore the method of combining music and dramatic declamation, practised by the Greeks, the French opera developed from a form of entertainment that had long flourished in France and was dear to the hearts of the French people—the ballet.
The famousBallet-comique de la roynegiven in Paris at the Petit Bourbon on the 15th of October, 1581, in honor of the marriage of the Duc de Joyeuse and Mademoiselle de Vaudemont, sister of King Henry III, is in a sense the first attempt in France toward what we now call opera. It was a magnificent spectacle in which songs, choruses, and dancing played a part. The plan of it was made by Baltasar de Beaujoyeaulx, whose real name was Baltasarini, groom of the chamber to the king and the queen mother (Catharine de Medici). The music was by the Sieur de Beaulieu, whose true name was probably Lambert, and another composer named Salmon, and the verses were by one named La Chesnaye. A few excerpts from a contemporary account of the performance will best illustrate what the ballet was. It was given before the king and his motherand an assemblage of the highest nobles in France. As for the overture the writer of the account says: ‘After some measure of silence had been established there came from behind the walls the sound of oboes, cornets, sackbuts (trombones), and other sweet-toned instruments.’ After this the Sieur de la Roche, escaping from a garden at the back of the hall, came and delivered an address before the king. He was followed by the sorceress Circe, from whom he had evidently escaped and who was bent on having him back again. But he eluded her and she returned to her garden. Then three sirens and a triton appeared and sang a chorus, which was echoed by singers concealed in a golden arch at the back of the hall. They disappeared and an immense fountain was drawn upon the stage by two sea-horses; and about the fountain twelve naiads were grouped, among whom were ladies of highest rank, covered with gold and jewels. The fountain was drawn round the room, spouting ‘real water,’ surrounded by eight tritons playing lutes, harps, etc., and by a dozen pages or more bearing lighted torches, all singing. After this chorus, Glaucus and Thetis took their place in chairs at the foot of the fountain and sang a little dialogue to which the tritons answered in chorus. The fountain was then drawn off behind Circe’s garden, and ten violinists came forward, dressed in white satin hung with gold, and played for the first dance which was taken by the twelve pages and the twelve naiads who had returned. Circe appeared, furious, from her garden and laid all the dancers under her spell so that they stood motionless, and then she retired to her garden swollen with victory. Suddenly there was a loud clap of thunder and Mercury appeared, descending in a cloud from which he sang. He then stepped from his cloud and freed the dancers from Circe’s spell, whereupon they at once took up the dance again. Mercury went back to his cloud andCirce came again upon the scene and bewitched not only the dancers, but Mercury himself, whose cloud would not conceal him, so that they all followed her two by two into her fatal garden. And here the garden was brilliantly lit, and the spectators saw walking therein a stag, a dog, an elephant, a lion, a tiger, and various other beasts who were once men, who now had undergone Circe’s spell. The first act ended here.
The second act opened with a five-part song for satyrs to which the golden vault replied in echo. A forest advanced across the floor of the hall, a forest with a rock in the middle and oak trees hung with garlands of gold, and four dryads to whom the satyrs sang a song of welcome. The forest went before the king and from its leafy depths a young dryad delivered a speech to him; then the forest turned to the left and proceeded to Pan’s grotto. Here Pan welcomed the dryads with a tune on his flute and they complained to him of Circe who had imprisoned not only their playmates the naiads, but Mercury himself as well. Thereupon Pan promised his aid and the wood went away. Entered then the four virtues, two of whom played upon the lute while the other two sang a little duet. The golden vault responded with an instrumental piece in five parts, and then Minerva approached in a car drawn by a huge serpent, Minerva bringing the head of Medusa. She delivered yet another address to the king and invoked Jupiter, who, after a few claps of thunder, descended in a cloud. He stood on his cloud and sang a song, after which the cloud deposited him upon the floor and he went off with Minerva to Pan’s grotto. Poor Pan was soundly scolded by Minerva for having let Circe steal away the naiads and Mercury. Pan, though replying that the power to overcome Circe belonged alone to Minerva, none the less started off for Circe’s garden followed by eight satyrs armed with knobbed and thorny clubs. Minerva went along, too,to the assault, but Jupiter was left alone on the stage. Once before Circe’s stronghold, that wily lady harangued her assailants and made fun of Minerva and of Jupiter. To Jupiter she said: ‘If any one is destined to triumph over me, it is the king of France, to whom you, even as I, must yield the realm you possess.’ Minerva and her heroes broke down the door of Circe’s garden and Jupiter struck the lady herself with a thunderbolt, who thereupon fell senseless to the floor. Minerva got possession of the magic wand, released those who had been chained by Circe’s spell, and at last restored Circe herself, who joined with her to lead a procession of all who had taken part in the play around the hall. Then followed a grand ballet before the king.
This performance of theBallet-comique de la roynelasted five hours and a half and the cost of producing it was more than three million six hundred thousand francs. This was approximately a century before the performance of ‘Berenice’ in Padua, of which mention has been made in a previous chapter; but whereas the Italian opera degenerated into a scenic display, the French opera resulted from a cutting down of lavish extravagance and uniting the various scenes and choruses with musical declamation.
The ballet remained the favorite diversion of the French court down to the middle of the seventeenth century, though the splendor of thisBallet-comiquewas never reproduced. Though it approached what we now call opera, it remained differentiated from opera in a few fundamental points. Parts were taken by members of the court society, the whole entertainment was planned to flatter the king so that the lines spoken by the players were often directed to the monarch in the manner of Circe’s lesson to Jupiter which we have just quoted, and there were long addresses without music and without relation to the plot of the ballet.
In 1645 and 1646 Cardinal Mazarin invited Italian singers to give an exhibition of their opera in Paris. They were coldly received. In Perrin’s famous letter to his protector, the Cardinal de la Rovera, April 30, 1659, the Italian music was likened to plain-song and airs from the cloister. Yet it was with the aim of making an opera for the French on the plan of the Italian opera that Perrin wrote his Pastoral in 1659, for which Cambert composed the music. This pastoral in music, called sometimesL’opéra d’Issy, was performed at Issy near Paris with great success. There was present such a crowd of princes, dukes, peers, and marshals of France that the whole way from Paris to Issy was thronged with their coaches. There was not room in the hall for all who came. Those who could find no place were patient, promenading through the gardens or holding court on the lawns. By express order of his majesty Louis XIV, the Pastoral was repeated at the palace of Vincennes. So French opera was inaugurated.
Of Cambert, who wrote the music, little is known. He had lessons on the harpsichord from Chambonnières, the Nestor of French clavecinists, he was organist at the Church of St. Honoré, and following the success of the Pastoral he was appointed superintendent of music to Anne of Austria, mother of Louis XIV. For more than ten years after the Pastoral Perrin and Cambert kept relatively silent. There are a few drinking songs by Cambert which belong to this time, but the two men rest in obscurity until the first performance of their operaPomoneon the 19th of March, 1671, at the Tennis Court near the Rue Guénégaud. In 1669 Perrin had obtained from Louis XIV the permit ‘to establish throughout the kingdom academies of opera, or representations with music in the French language after the manner of those in Italy.’ Perrin secured Cambert to write music for these representations, andPomone, their joint product, is the first opera publicly performed in Paris. A great part of their singers had been recruited from churches in the country, but the success of this first performance was enormous. Only the music of one act has been preserved. It is childish, but at moments may stand favorably by that of Lully. What makes it so heavy to our ears are the long passages of dull, unrhythmical recitative which, from the point of view of music, are vague and ill-formed.
To Cambert and Perrin must be given the honor of having established French opera. To them was awarded the first royal warrant to give opera throughout the kingdom.Pomonewas an auspicious beginning; but within a year trouble had come between the two men, and Cambert’s next opera was set to words by another poet, Gilbert, well known in his day. And then, apparently as sequence to the split between Cambert and Perrin, Cambert was himself deprived of his royal rights, the opera was given into the hands of one sole man, who had long been plotting to acquire it, and Cambert departed to England.
This one man, Jean Baptiste Lully (or Lulli), was born in Florence or near there in 1633. He had come to Paris when a boy of twelve or thirteen in the suite of the Duc de Guise, knowing little of music, save the guitar. He had been a kitchen boy in the service of Mlle. de Montpensier, and now, in 1672, was given sole control over opera throughout the kingdom of France. The way in which he won favor with the king shows him to have been an intriguer, and the king to have had little genuine appreciation of music apart from the tunes to which he danced in the court ballets. Lully was at first admitted into the king’s band ofviolins, and later was made head of a special band. Not only was he a ready composer of dances to the king’s taste; he was himself a dancer and a mimic. In Molière’s comedy-ballets to which he was commissioned to compose music he often acted with much-admired skill. As to his treatment of Molière the less said perhaps the better. He was a skillful manager, he was always ready with some amusement for the court. From the start he played for the royal favor, and he won it. Not only was he given the sole authority to produce operas in France; Cambert was even denied the right to produce his as well.
Lully had no systematic training as a musician, but he learned from all he came in contact with; from Cambert, who had written music for the ballets; from Cavalli, who came to Paris with hisXerxesin 1660; and again withErcole amantein 1662, to both of which Lully was commissioned to set ballets that they might meet with the requirements of French courtly taste. From 1672, when he gained control of the opera, to his death, in 1687, he wrote an opera, atragédie lyrique, every year. His manner of composing, according to Lecerf de la Viéville (1705) was as follows: ‘He read the libretto until he knew it nearly by heart; he would then sit down at his harpsichord, sing over the words again and again, pounding the harpsichord; his snuff-box at one end of it, the keys dirty and covered with tobacco (for he was very slovenly). When he had finished singing and had got his songs well in his head, his secretaries, Lalouette or Collasse, came, and to them he dictated. The next day he could hardly remember what he had dictated.’
Lully was a clever, exceedingly intelligent man, a good actor, a good clown, a good dancer, an unscrupulous plotter, an iron disciplinarian. Not only did he write the music to his operas, he superintended and often remodelled the libretti furnished him by Quinault,the poet of his own choosing. He was indefatigably painstaking. He coached the singers even to the way they should enter and leave the stage, and he drilled the orchestra so that it had a precision, the traditions of which endured for more than a century. He was not a great musician. One may believe that he left the filling out of his harmonies to his secretaries, Lalouette and Collasse. His airs and his choruses are in the ballet style of the century. Only in recitative did he accomplish anything new. He wrote his operas at the same time Racine was producing many of his most famous tragedies—Racine, who was a master of verse and of declamation; and he modelled his recitative according to Racine’s art of declamation. The great law of it is that it shall be syllabic, one syllable to one musical tone. Music is here in strict bondage to words. Lecerf says that the recitative as developed by Lully is a just mean between tragic declamation and the art of music. According to L. de la Laurencie[139]a comparison of Lully’s recitative with the recitative of Carissimi or of Provenzale shows that Lully proceeded to a clearing of the Italian technique, cutting from it all the absurd weeds which the taste forbel cantoand even musical taste in the strict sense had let grow in the garden of melody. We have in the recitative of Lully, then, something that is not music, but a mean between declamation and music. Often stiff and monotonous, it is only rarely impassioned and effective. Always the words, the rhyme and the verse are of paramount importance. In this regard it was so much to the taste of the French audiences, of theprécieux, that Lully’s operas came to be valued far more for their recitative than for their airs. The recitative became not an artificial bond between airs and choruses, but the main burden of the opera, as indeed it should be; and in this respect he is a great reformer and akin to Monteverdi on the one hand and Gluck on the other. He is the founder of the admirable French style of declamation. Thus the opera of Lully and the opera of Scarlatti are strikingly different. Both were bound to a strict public convention, but Scarlatti wrote for thebel canto, Lully for declamation; the Italians craved the sensuous beauty of the voice in song and let the drama go; the French demanded intelligent declamation, and sacrificed music. Of the two the French opera was essentially more rational and nearer artistic truth, though even in Lully’s lifetime it became wholly stereotyped; and neither form as it left the hands of its finisher was capable of further development until infused with new life by a great reformer such as Gluck.